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INTIMATE GLIMPSES OF 
LIFE IN INDIA 



A NARRATIVE OF OBSERVATIONS, 
EDUCATIONAL, SOCIAL, AND RELIGIOUS 
IN THE WINTER OF 1899-1900 



BY 

GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD, LL.D. 

Author of "In Korea with Marquis Ito" 

"Knowledge, Life and Reality," 

"Rare Days in Japan," etc. 




BOSTON 
RICHARD G. BADGER 

THE GORHAM PRESS 



COPYBIGHT, 1919, BY RiCHARD G. BaDGEB 



All Rights Reserved 



QCT II 1919 



Made in the United States of America 



The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 



©CU5353G9 
A 



"In this country are born the Buddhas^ the Private 
Buddhas, the Chief Disciples, the Eighty Great Disciples, 
the Universal Monarch, and other eminent ones, magnates 
of the warrior caste, of the Brahman caste, and the wealthy 
householders,'' 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGB3 

I. The Invitation and the Journey ... 11 

II. Beautiful Bombay 23 

III. Two Notable Ceremonials 48 

IV. A Model Native City 72 

V. Relics of Mogul Magnificence ... 92 

VI. Glorious Darjeeling 121 

VII. The Capital City 138 

VIII. Holy Benares 172 

IX. The Caves of Ellora 195 

X. An Oasis in the Desert 216 

XI. Madras and Fort George 236 

XII. Madura and Southern India 269 

XIII. Ceylon and Homeward-bound .... 285 

Index 311 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Encased in White Marble and Beautifully Inlaid Frontispiece 

TO FACE 
PAGE 

The Entire Body of School Children 34 

The House of the Bridegroom 64 

A Wise Paternal Government 82 

The Stronghold of the City of Delhi 94 

The Most Perfect Tower in the World 100 

WaUs of Good Stone-Work 104 

This Mosque may be Likened to a Precious Pearl . . 110 

They Designed hke Titans and Finished like Jewellers 114 

The Glory of Agra: A Dream in Marble .... 120 

The Range to be Named Himachal, the Snowy . . 128 

The Filth-Laden Waters 168 

On the Bank above the Burning Ghat 180 

Most Wonderful of all Rock-Temples 208 

The Tank of the Golden Lilies 278 

One Vast Green Garden of Nature 288 



INTIMATE GLIMPSES OF 
LIFE IN INDIA 



INTIMATE GLIMPSES OF 
LIFE IN INDIA 



CHAPTER I 

THE INVITATION AND THE JOUENEY 

THE winter of 1899-1900 was one of uncommon, 
though in several respects of extremely pain- 
ful, interest to the observant traveller in India. The 
ravages of plague and famine were over extended 
areas more severe and destructive than evep^lDefore 
under British rule; and the Government was being 
hampered and even thwarted in its efforts to miti- 
gate the distress of the multitudes, chiefly by their 
own gross and absurd superstitions. Many of the 
people believed that the plague had been brought 
upon the nation through the intercession with the 
gods of Queen Victoria in her wrath at the defile- 
ment of her statue on the maidan or public plaza of 
the city of Bombay. When their relatives were 
taken away, after their sickness had been concealed 
until they were in dying condition, to the segrega- 
tion camps, and of course taken never to return, they 

11 



12 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

credited the rumor that the British had used their 
blood to prepare cement for the railroad bridges. 
Inoculation they regarded as the crafty and cruel 
method of poisoning the surplus population. In the 
efforts to feed the starving, the usurious native rice 
merchants were no insignificant obstacle. For they 
were exporting food, or holding it at high prices for 
home consumption, while the Government and mis- 
sionaries were urging, quite properly, that succor 
should be sent by the shipload from England and 
America. 

To one with insight the political situation was 
also rendered intensely interesting by the fact that 
the restlessness and dissatisfaction of many, even 
of the more educated of the native classes, were be- 
ing increased by a not very accurate knowledge of 
the way in which another Oriental people, the Japa- 
nese, had forged ahead to a place in the front rank 
of nations. Why should not India — they were ask- 
ing themselves — in like manner show herself the equal 
or the superior of the Western peoples ; and so quite 
capable of governing herself without their as sis t- 
tance, not to say interference.'^ This inquiry 
seemed more timely and reasonable, and without 
doubt was more insistent, because just then Great 
Britain was showing to the world an unexpected 
weakness and lack of preparation in military mat- 
ters in its conduct of the war with the Boers. 

In educational affairs, too, there were signs of 



The Invitation and the Jowrney 13 

the ferment of new opinions and new demands every- 
where to be detected by the watchful eye, even where 
they were not made more obvious by being inter- 
preted in the form of confidential conversations. 
Much of the existing system, in its production of a 
large surplus of "half-baked" babus, who were com- 
peting and clamoring for easy government positions, 
was coming to be regarded as a failure in the more 
thoughtful native as well as foreign circles. And 
inasmuch as new ideas were flowing in from abroad, 
and numerous eiforts at reform were breaking forth 
from the breast of Hinduism itself, and the practices 
of caste were succumbing to pressure from economic 
and material changes (for how shall different castes, 
or those proud of caste and the veriest outcasts, 
avoid contact when crowded together in a third-class 
railway car?), opinions and customs on matters of 
morals and religion were in a most interesting state 
of transition. 

But although the writer had unusual opportunity 
for gathering impressions in all these fields, lying at 
that time, as they were, more or less exposed to the 
eyes of any intelligent and interested observer, the 
things revealed to him of this sort alone might seem 
to those who have travelled in India scarcely worthy 
of being narrated at any such length as to fill a 
sizeable book. Let it then be frankly — however 
modestly — affirmed that many of the observations 
and experiences about to be described are decidedly 



14« Intimate Glvmpses of Life in India 

unusual, and some of them are quite unique. This 
quality they possess on account of the nature of 
the invitation which took the writer to India, and of 
its entirely unexpected and antecedently incalculable 
sequences. 

The story of the invitation to spend the winter 
lecturing in India — its nature and how it came to 
be given — needs, then, briefly to be told. Most of 
this story was wholly unknown to me until after the 
invitation had been received and accepted; and, in- 
deed, after I had been for some time in the coun- 
try. The only inkling of any such thing in pros- 
pect came in the form of a request from Professor 
Maher, the celebrated teacher and writer on psy- 
chology and philosophy at the Jesuit College in 
Stonyhurst, England. His letter asked that he 
should be provided with some favorable notices of 
my books to send to a friend in India who wished to 
know more about them with a view to a possible use 
of them there. With this request my publishers 
were, of course, entirely willing to comply. I 
learned afterward that Father Bochum, professor 
of philosophy in St. Francis Xavier College in Bom- 
bay, had refused to teach the courses in this sub- 
ject required by the Government University, on the 
ground, as he explained to me, that he and his col- 
leagues came to India in behalf of Christian truth, 
and could not reconcile it with their mission to in- 
oculate their pupils with what they regarded as the 



The Invitation and the Journey 15 

poisonous doctrines of Spencerian agnosticism and 
infidelity. But this refusal was an embarrassing 
thing for both the College and the University. For 
St. Francis Xavier was a favorite college with the 
Parsees of Bombay ; and the Parsees, in compari- 
son with their numbers, were much the most wealthy, 
well-educated, and public-spirited of the citizens of 
the Bombay Presidency. 

Moved by this conviction, and wishing to get his 
College out of its embarrassing position. Father 
Bochum had urged in the committee on curriculum 
the substitution of some of my books, especially the 
Physiological Psychology and the Philosophy of 
Mind, for the works of Mr. Spencer. It should be 
explained in this connection that the Government 
Universities in India are not teaching institutions at 
all. The University sets the curriculum, holds the 
examinations, grants the degrees, and presides Ht the 
greater functions which are held in "Convocation 
Hall." The aiRliated colleges do the teaching, and 
prepare and present the candidates for the various 
degrees. And, indeed, this is the only feasible course 
in India; for you cannot mix Muhammadans, Hin- 
dus, Buddhists, Jains, and various Christian sects, 
not to speak of "agnostics and infidels," in the dor- 
mitories, class-rooms and mess of a common college 
life. 

The chairman of the committee on curriculum, 
who was an Englishman and an avowed disciple of 



16 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

the Spencerian system, did not favor Father Bo- 
chum's proposal and demanded to know, "Who is 
this Professor Ladd; I never heard of him." "So 
much the worse for you," retorted the doughty 
churchman, and forthwith wrote a letter to his 
friend. Professor Maher, begging material that 
should he of help to his contention. In spite of all, 
however, my champion was beaten in the commit- 
tee and his request was denied him. Not at all 
daunted at this, however, he took an appeal to the 
University Council or Senate, and there, having the 
active support of Chief Justice Candy, the Vice- 
Chancellor, and other influential members, he car- 
ried his petition by a two-thirds majority. And, 
then, on learning that he whose cause he had so 
pluckily espoused and completely won, was on his 
way around the world and would visit India, after 
having lectured in Japan with the impriTnatur of 
the Government there, his zeal and courage carried 
him to unexampled lengths in the resolve to justify 
and confirm the wisdom of his previous action. With 
very little dissent in the Senate, and with the yet 
more active support of the Chancellor, a motion 
was carried to invite me to lecture in Convocation 
Hall, under the auspices of the University of Bom- 
bay, the first and last lectures of the course being 
presided over by the Chancellor in person. This 
action taken was something the like of which had 
never happened before. 



The Invitation and the Jowrney 17 

To us, who think so Httle of established custom, 
in academical as in other matters, and to whom 
precedent is of so little account, it is difficult to 
conceive of the stir which these seeming trivialities 
made in all India, with reverberations even as far 
away as Great Britain. One of its principal im- 
mediate effects was to make the lecturer suspected 
of being a Jesuit in disguise. At any rate, I was 
from the first conspicuously in favor with the Ro- 
man Catholics. This, on the other hand, quite re- 
gardless of the question whether we stood together 
for the defence of truth or for the propagation of 
error, served to "queer" me with some of the Prot- 
estant missionaries. My experience, however, is not 
the only instance which has fallen under my ob-. 
servation, where these good people have seemed to 
prefer to take sides against those whose competi- 
tion they most fear in the way of making numbers 
of converts, rather than with those whose help they 
ought to welcome in the defence and spread of the 
fundamental truths of morals and religion. The 
prestige involved, and the active and not altogether 
good-natured discussion to which it gave rise in some 
of the more extreme of the religious press on both 
sides, in England as well as in India, brought the 
unconscious and unwilling subject of it all, for the 
first time in a somewhat checkered life, into the full 
"lime-light." 

The native officials, both high and low, and all 



18 Intimate Glimpses of Life m India 

the higher native social classes in India, are prompt 
and eager to take their cue from the Government cir- 
cles in their treatment of foreign visitors. This is 
not altogether due to the very natural desire "to be 
in the swim," as the saying is, or to curry favor with 
those in positions of economic and political control. 
In the case of the more wealthy and intelligent of 
the natives, such an attitude of deference arises in 
acknowledgment of the conviction that, with all its 
mistakes and even crimes in the past, and all its 
present deficiencies, the security and welfare of the 
entire continent of India depend quite absolutely on 
the guidance and guardianship of the British Gov- 
ernment in India. In spite of the fact that the 
vastly improved facility of intercourse between In- 
dia and the "home-country" has operated to in- 
crease the number of English women who "come out" 
to be with their male friends and relatives, and con- 
sequently to decrease the number of illicit connec- 
tions between British officials and native women, 
there are not a few instances of sincere respect and 
affection between the two races. For example, 
Chief Justice Candy did not hesitate to affirm that 
he had never sat on the bench with any one for whose 
legal ability and good judgment he had more re- 
spect than his native colleague, Chief Justice 
Ranade; and Lady Candy was mourning the death 
by plague of her native steward with as much sin- 
cerity as could have been bestowed upon a similar af- 
fliction in an English family. It is necessary to 



The Invitation and the Journey 19 

bear in mind such influences as these in order to un- 
derstand the atmosphere by which we were sur- 
rounded during the winter spent in India. 

The stay of about two months in Japan, during 
which I was engaged in giving lectures before the 
teachers under the auspices of the Imperial Educa- 
tional Society, and in the Imperial University, be- 
sides numerous addresses of a more general char- 
acter, was by no means without value in prepara- 
tion for the more difficult work in India. Not only 
did it give the lecturer more familiarity with the ma- 
terial, since the principal course in the two coun- 
tries bore the same title, but also more facility in 
method when addressing audiences so diff*erently dis- 
posed toward the speaker as are those of the Ori- 
ent. For the Oriental does not readily betray his 
real attitude, either to the person speaking or to 
the thing spoken. The listener "keeps his face" to 
the "saving of the lecturer's face"; but, often 
enough, to the confusion of the latter's judgment as 
to the way his words are being taken. It is not 
beyond possibility for the missionary or other for- 
eign teacher to go on talking for years to an Oriental 
audience without really knowing how they are tak- 
ing him or his teachings. A firm grasp on the sub- 
ject, scanty notes but full information, and the art 
of quick adaptability to the special occasion or 
changing temper of his hearers, are indispensable for 
the best success with an Oriental audience. 

Just as we were leaving Japan an incident oc- 



20 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

curred which threw additional light on the curious 
and complicated secret relations of native and for- 
eign governments in the Orient. Our ship had 
stopped two days for the customary coaling at 
Shimonoseki, and was to sail for Hong Kong at the 
earliest dawn of the next morning. But late in the 
evening there were unmistakable signs otf some^ 
thing quite unusual about to happen. The harbor 
police were alert in their watch about the ship ; the 
captain kept going to the ship's side and peering 
curiously into the shadows below. What this was 
all about, he did not disclose, until we were out of 
Japanese waters the following morning. It then 
became known to us in a confidential way, that the 
celebrated Chinese leader in the attempt of the Chi- 
nese Emperor to institute much needed reforms, the 
now historically notable Kang Yu-wei, had come 
aboard and was booked for safe delivery to the Brit- 
ish Government at Hong Kong. The wrathful Em- 
press Dowager of China, the "Old Buddha," as Li 
Hung Chang used to call her, after reducing to sub- 
mission the young Emperor, and having executed 
such of Kang Yu-wei's friends and relatives as she 
could lay her hands upon, had set a large price on 
their leader's head. But he had fled and had taken 
refuge in Japan. The Government of Japan, quite 
reasonably, neither wished to have the reformer as- 
sassinated on their territory, nor cared to incur the 
displeasure of China at harboring in safety one of 



The Invitation and the Journey 21 

her political refugees. He was, therefore, quietly 
turned over to the British Government, which, with 
fewer scruples, could afford a surer protection to 
such a criminal patriot. Kang Yu-wei occupied the 
cabin just opposite to ours; and to it he stuck very 
close, taking all his meals there, — himself cueless in 
token of his advanced position in the reform move- 
ment, but closely guarded by two trusty, though 
"pig-tailed," Chinamen in front of the cabin door. 
I contribute gladly this hitherto unpublished bit of 
the history of attempts at political reform in China. 
And to this I add my own strong conviction that 
China will never reform itself without being in a 
measure compelled and assisted by foreign influences. 
The only other experiences of the voyage to Bom- 
bay which have any important bearing on the win- 
ter spent in India concern the writer's condition of 
health. A slight attack of malarial fever had been 
very much intensified by a successful vaccination 
on the day before leaving Kobe. This fever had in- 
creased so that on every other day the patient was 
confined to his steamer-chair, without pain, to be 
sure, but without appetite and with diminishing 
strength, and much of the time not more than half- 
conscious of his surroundings. Certainly not a very 
favorable preparation for a winter's lecturing cam- 
paign in the trying climate of India. But the Cap- 
tain had ordered a special reservation of the store 
of chickens for his sick passenger. When the Chi- 



22 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

nese cabin-boy brought the first bowl of the ship- 
cook's preparation to the cabin, he said with an air 
of disgust: "Missy! cook no makee good chicky 
bloth ; mollow I make chickv bloth for master." Our 
"yellow angel," for so we came to call him, was bet- 
ter than his word. For his bowls of broth, rich and 
steaming, and heavy doses of quinine, and the de- 
lightful days and nights spent in the open air, on 
board ship when sailing in the tropics, so far re- 
vived the patient that he was able to put up a good 
fight against his malady, while the ship was on its 
way to Colombo, Ceylon. After a short visit there 
(a brief account of which will be given in connection 
with our return) three days of sailing on an old- 
fashioned, but for that very reason most comfort- 
able English ship of the Australian line, with its 
large and airy cabin, abundance of deck-room, and 
wholesome fare, although it did not land him "quite 
fit" as the English are wont to say, did tide him over 
the shoals of that disaster which is so fatal to many 
travelers in India and the Far East. 



CHAPTER II 



BEAUTIFUL BOMBAY 



T T was scarcely six of the morning in late No- 
-■• vember, 1899, when the cabin-boy of the "Chu- 
san" woke us with the announcement that breakfast 
would be at a quarter before seven. When we went 
on deck the sun was just rising. It would have 
been worth a much earlier and more inconvenient 
arousal to see the queenly city of British India for 
the first time under such favorable circumstances. 
The low-lying island, or rather group of islands, 
now made into a peninsula by various fillings and 
causeways, above which directly in front of the har- 
bor tower the clustered government buildings and 
other more scattered lofty structures, with Malabar 
Hill and its villas and bungalows enshrouded in gar- 
dens of palms and other tropical foliage, and all 
backed by the rugged hills of the mainland which 
rise to an altitude of from 1000 to 2000 feet, make 
a picture which easily rivals, if it does not surpass 
that seen from the harbor of Naples. In the har- 
bor itself the ships of many nations lay anchored, 
just beginning to stir themselves for the day's work. 

23 



24? Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

But our Captain, who wanted to get to the docks 
to discharge and take on cargo, was not interested 
in the lovely spectacle. He was fuming in real Eng- 
lish fashion at the nonsense of being kept waiting 
more than an hour in quarantine, when his ship had 
arrived, with clean papers from non-infected ports, 
in plague-infested Bombay. As soon, however, as 
others besides the health-officers were allowed on 
board, we were greeted by the messenger who had 
been sent to welcome us and see to the work of get- 
ting our luggage through the customs. This was 
promptly accomplished at a total expense of six 
rupees and two annas (just about two dollars) in- 
cluding the small camera. Being landed from the 
ship's launch at the wharf, we were met by our mis- 
sionary friend and host, Mr. Edward Hume, and a 
Catholic priest representing Father Bochum. The 
latter assured me that the press reports which 
claimed the plague to be diminishing in Bombay were 
not truthful. It was increasing; he had already 
been at the bedside of the dying, that morning. 

On arrival at the missionary compound in the na- 
tive quarter of BycuUa, we were treated to a new 
variation in the ways in which your Oriental friends 
welcome and dismiss you as their guest. This wel- 
come was not a la mode Japanese, but a la mode 
Indian. And the pupils of the school had risen en 
massey as it were, to make a success of it. Across 
the gate was stretched the word "Welcome" cut in 



Beawtifvl BoTnhay 26 

tissue paper and pasted on a background of white. 
Festoons of bits of colored paper fluttered from 
the trees along the driveway ; and after driving 
between rows of children clapping hands, on alight- 
ing from the victoria, we were greeted with a song. 

All through these dreadful days of famine and 
plague, the bright spots for as many of the suff'erers 
as was possible — and this was at most, only a tiny 
percentage of the millions of the people — were in 
the missionary hospitals and schools. The Govern- 
ment was doing what it well could for the scantiest 
relief of these millions. But it could not furnish 
them comfort, and the spirit of song and flowers. 
As we were expressly told, however, "song and flow- 
ers accompany everything in India." In this school, 
two hundred of the youngest were "famine chil- 
dren," who had been taken from the arms of their 
mothers or picked up from the roadside where they 
had been abandoned to die of starvation. 

It is not our intention, here or in any of the fol- 
lowing pages, to attempt the role of cicerone, drago- 
man, or guide-book. But a few words will perhaps 
help to make more capable of "visualization" the sur- 
rounding material "atmosphere" in which the next 
few weeks of our winter in India were spent. As has 
already been indicated, the public buildings of Bom- 
bay are from the harbor conspicuously imposing. 
The same thing is true of them when seen from the 
streets or from the open public places, in which or 



26 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

near which they are situated. Of these the most 
impressive is the line of public offices and university 
buildings which stretches along the esplanade and 
faces the Back Bay. Their architecture is a mix- 
ture of Gothic and Saracenic, and the interior dec- 
orations are in teakwood, carved by a native work- 
man in native and therefore Oriental designs. The 
University Library and University Hall were soon 
to become of most personal interest. Both of these 
buildings were largely built by the munificent gifts 
of wealthy natives ; the former by Mr. Premchand 
Raichand, in memory of his mother Rajabai, and 
called by her name; the latter by Sir Cowasjee Je- 
hangir, and called by the name of the donor. It 
was in University or "Convocation" Hall that the 
lectures were given. But since the structure is 104 
feet long and 63 feet high to the apex of the groined 
ceiling, with an apse separated from the hall by a 
grand arch, and a gallery eight feet broad around 
three sides, it is manifestly much better adapted for 
academic ceremonials than for successful lecturing. 
The reader, therefore, must not imagine the lecturer 
as shouting at the top of his voice to two thousand 
persons, most of them indifferent to what was being 
said, while a few bend painfully forward in the vain 
effort to catch an occasional word; but, the rather, 
quietly discoursing to a few hundreds of exceedingly 
thoughtful adults, grouped closely around him on 
the platform or on the rows of benches nearest to 
the front. 



Beautiful Bombay 27 

It is not, however, the magnificent buildings, the 
art galleries, or the museums, but the life and 
thought of the people, high and low, which most in- 
terest me when traveling in foreign lands. This is es- 
pecially true of the Orient, where all that challenges 
to attention and the effort at understanding and 
sympathy appeals much more to the sense of mys- 
tery, and fascinates the imagination much more 
deeply, than anything which Europe can furnish. 
The street -life of the Orient must be seen to be ap- 
preciated ; its variety of picturesque structures, ani- 
mal and human forms, costumes, and strange cus- 
toms, demand for their fullest effect to enter the 
mind through the eye. Nowhere else is this more 
true than on the native streets of Bombay, whose 
only rivals in these respects are the Straits Settle- 
ment cities of Singapore and Penang. 

Imagine, then, narrow and tortuous lanes, lined 
with houses several stories high, many of which have 
carved fronts and projecting stories supported upon 
elaborately sculptured corbels, with here and there 
Muhammadan mosques and various kinds of Hindu 
temples gaudily painted. Back and forth in these 
streets flow endless crowds of vehicles and human 
beings dressed in motley costumes of all colors, or 
with only a not too generous breech-cloth, or even 
with nothing at all. They are of all climes and 
races : — "Arabs from Muscat, Persians from the 
Gulf, Afghans from the northern frontier, black, 
shaggy Beluchis, negroes of Zanzibar, islanders from 



28 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

the Maldives and Laccadives, Malagashes, Malays 
and Chinese, throng and jostle with Parsees in their 
sloping hats, with Jews, Lascars, fishermen, Raj- 
poots, Fakirs, Europeans, Sepoys and Sahibs." 

The poorer of these natives are housed, whole 
families of the Oriental size in single rooms, into 
which neither sunshine nor fresh air can ever come 
directly, because they are ranged on either side of 
a hall which runs straight through from front to 
rear. The only means of discharging garbage and 
ofFal is to dump it down into some receptacle from 
this halPs back door. Since the lower stories of 
many of these buildings are used for the storage of 
grain, and the rats which infest this grain are the 
chief bearers of the plague, it need occasion no won- 
der that the suppression of this dreadful pestilence 
was no holiday task for the Government of Bom- 
bay. At our first drive through these native quar- 
ters, our attention was called to the large number 
of houses decorated (?) with half-circles and whole 
circles of red paint. The former meant "case of 
plague here" ; the latter completed the story : "Death 
by plague here." On a single house more than sixty 
full circles were to be discerned. 

As has already been said, the favorite residence 
of the wealthy and official classes is Malabar Hill. 
The hill is terraced to its top, from which may be 
obtained a view that has without exaggeration been 
called "one of the finest in the world." On the same 



Beautiful Bombay 29 

ridge is the ladies' "Gymkhana," or meeting-place 
for athletic sports and games. But overtopping all 
the hill, and all the beautiful but then sorely stricken 
city, were the "Towers of Silence," with their in- 
audible but impressive voice proclaiming the fateful 
truth that the same end comes to all alike. 

Our visit to the "Towers of Silence" was inter- 
esting, among other respects, in this one peculiar to 
the student of the history and doctrine of religious 
symbolism, ceremonial and myth. We were, of 
course, treated to the customary sights and explana- 
tions — the five tomers which, however, look more like 
huge gas-tanks than anything else to which we are 
accustomed in this country, the "everlasting fire" 
kept burning through the centuries by being con- 
stantly fed with small pieces of sandal-wood, the 
foul birds perched, expectant, upon the walls and 
neighboring trees, and the surrounding grove, sol- 
emn and beautiful, with its cypresses pointing, as the 
Parsees themselves say, heavenward. It was duly 
explained how the bodies were placed, quite naked, 
on the circular "gridiron" formed by the two walls 
between the outside one and the central well ; how the 
adult males were placed in the outer series of com- 
partments thus formed, the women in the middle se- 
ries, and the children in the compartment nearest 
the well; and how, when at the end of an hour or 
two the vultures had completed their work, the bare 
bones were removed by the carriers of the dead, 



80 Intimate Glvmpses of Life vn India 

gloved and with tongs, cast into the well, and left 
to bleach in sun and wind until they become per- 
fectly dry and afterward crumble into dust. All 
this the professional cicerone, either out of defer- 
ence to the scientific and practical mind of the West- 
erner, or because he was himself ignorant of the 
profound spiritual significance of this way of dis- 
posing of the dead, wished us to regard as simply a 
particularly good and safe sanitary custom. But 
we knew what the philosophy which underlay the 
ceremonial, the symbolism clothed in these repulsive 
facts, really signified. For, the triumph of univer- 
sal purity, physical and moral, over the nastiness 
of physical and moral evil, was the ideal of the an- 
cestors in Persia of the Par sees of Bombay. And 
where should the foulness of human flesh, when de- 
serted by the immortal spirit, while waiting for its 
resurrection be deposited, that it might not defile 
the sacred universal elements of fire, water and 
earth ? 

We were fortunate in being permitted to remain 
within the enclosure while the first funeral of the day 
ascended the flight of steps leading to the "Towers." 
There were only six persons of the procession, in 
three pairs, each pair united by a scarf or shawl 
stretching between them. The first pair were the 
corpse-bearers, and one of them had, wrapped in 
white, the body of a child which he bore aloft. This 
"pairship," too, is symbolical of brotherly union; 
as a matter of fact, in the well of the towers of si- 



Beautiful Bombay 31 

lence all classes of the Parsees of Bombay mingle 
as common dust. Two other pairs of attendants 
followed ; and we saw them all come out of the chapel 
to get a handful of water for their purification, and 
heard them within chanting or droning their 
prayers. 

The university lectures were "inaugurated," as 
the saying is, by a reception given to us by Mr. Tata, 
a wealthy and benevolent Parsee. With reference 
to the general character of this gathering, it is 
enough to quote a few words from a long article in 
the Bombay "Times of India" for November 30th, 
1899. 

"The gathering was certainly one of the most in- 
teresting which has taken place for a long time in 
the city. First and foremost education, in the ad- 
vancement of which Mr. J. N. Tata has himself 
worked so assiduously, was represented. Tlien there 
were representatives of all the professions and of 
nearly every branch of commerce. It was, too, al- 
most an international assembly, and some of tlie 
groups which resulted were, to say the least, remark- 
able. The rooms were admirably adapted for use 
on such an occasion, and the large number present" 
(rather more than 1000) "testified to the immense 
amount of interest which it had aroused." 

Addresses of welcome were given by Vice-Chan- 
cellor Candy and Chief Justice Ranade. The for- 



32 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

mer made reference to the peculiar relations exist- 
ing between India and the University from which 
the lecturer came, through "the benefactions of 
Elihu Yale of London, lately Governor of the East 
India Company's possessions at Madras." Nor did 
he hesitate to refer to the controversy that had re- 
sulted in the Senate of the University of Bombay's 
acceptance of the proposition, "so ably supported 
by one of its Fellows," which had, after "due inves- 
tigation of their merits," placed "the Professor's 
works among our recognized text-books." More en- 
lightening still to the author were the words of the 
native Judge of the Supreme Bench of the Bombay 
Presidency. "When the discussion arose," said 
Justice Ranade, "in the Senate of the University, 
whether Psychology should or should not be made 
a subject of study, the objection was urged that no 
suitable books were available. Then when Professor 
Ladd's books were named, one party objected be- 
cause it was claimed that, if a physiological basis 
were sought for psychology, it would destroy psy- 
chology. The other party claimed that it would 
only give an additional scientific basis for psychol- 
ogy. The old Indian position is different from both 
these positions. I have glanced through the Pro- 
fessor's Outlines of Physiological Psychology, and 
find that he takes a conservative position, and while 
seeking for a physiological basis, yet he retains a 
true spiritual psychology." (It is exceedingly in- 



Beautiful Bombay 33 

teresting to recall in this connection that an entirely 
similar dispute had been carried on in this country, 
though some fifteen years earlier.) 

Succeeding social functions provided for our en- 
tertainment may be dismissed with a few words de- 
signed to illustrate several sides of the social life, 
both native and foreign, in British India. At a 
dinner given by the Vice-Chancellor the guests were 
most appropriately selected to represent the differ- 
ent educational interests of the city and the Presi- 
dency. Besides the officers from the principal af- 
filiated colleges, Mr. J. J. Tata, the host of the 
week before, and Sir (and Lady) Jehangir, the son 
of the man who gave the Convocation Hall, were 
present. Of the men connected with the University, 
the St. Francis Xavier Fathers seemed much the 
brightest and best "up with the times" ; the native 
business men were in matters of general information 
most worth while to question. Indeed throughout 
all the Orient I was impressed with the high quality 
of work in education done by the Jesuit missionar- 
ies, and by the rather inferior ser^dces of the ap- 
pointees in the Government educational institutions. 
Perhaps the point of view of too many of them is 
illustrated by the question "speered at" a confi- 
dential friend by the wife of the President of the 
Government College. This lady was most anxious 
to know whether "I was not on a money-making 
tour." When she was assured that I was travelling 



34 Intimate Gli/mpses of Life m India 

at my own charges and as the representative of my 
university, she seemed much surprised. 

The dignified bearing and quiet culture of the best 
of the Parsees was brought to our notice when we 
were at Sir Jehangir Petit's for afternoon tea. His 
house is a palace most beautifully located across the 
road from the sea. Among the few who had been 
invited to meet us were one of the St. Xavier Fathers 
— Sir Jehangir's son is a graduate of this college 
— and the Protestant missionary to the Muhamma- 
dans, Rev. Mr. Davis. The son had prepared a 
brief outline of Parsee doctrine as he understood it, 
which, whether a product of the most distinguished 
scholarship or not, was creditable to his seriousness. 
So was the small but carefully selected private li- 
brary which I was shown. Both he and his beau- 
tiful young wife were constant attendants upon the 
lectures on "the philosophy of mind." 

Quite different, but in a way not less interesting, 
was an entertainment given to us in the mission- 
compound where we were guests. Such an enter- 
tainment, I run no great risk in affirming, neither 
would, nor well could, have been afforded outside of 
India. It was an exhibition of a native juggler and 
snake-charmer. The entire body of school children 
were seated upon mats on the ground — boys on one 
side and girls on the other — while we and our adult 
friends occupied chairs at the end of the verandah. 
The juggler had three assistants, two men and a 




THE ENTIRE BODY OF SCHOOL CHILDREN 



Beautifid Bomb ay S5 

boy. He had brought an assortment — perhaps it 
would not be impertinent or destructive to the per- 
former's professional reputation to call it "a job 
lot" — of snakes, consisting of two cobras, one large 
and one small, a large mud snake, a water snake, and 
a small snake of a species not known to any one 
present. A mongoose was tied to a stake near by. 
He seemed very restless, as though anticipating a 
fight with one of the cobras. The exhibition of this 
form of sport was offered for a not extravagant 
extra charge; but the spectacle was thought to be 
altogether too bloody and otherwise objectionable 
as an entertainment for children, and in celebration 
of a wedding anniversary. For myself, I must con- 
fess I should not have otherwise been unwilling to 
see it, if for no other reason, as a study in animal 
craft and courage from the psychological point of 
view. But Sir Mongoose had a bit of a bag slipped 
over his wagging head, and thereupon promptly sub- 
sided. The snakes were displayed; but the shght 
teasing given to the cobras did not seem to excite 
them greatly ; and since all the skill in handling is 
tested by the temper of the snake at the moment, 
the whole affair was much tamer than what we saw 
nat a few times later. For one can scarcely be 
several months in India and Ceylon without discov- 
ering that a chapter on the subject of snakes in 
these countries cannot be so brief as the celebrated 
chapter on snakes in Ireland. But the attitude of 



36 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

the common people toward these reptiles is a suffi- 
cient refutation of the silly biological theory de- 
vised to explain why all mankind find the serpent 
fearsome and repulsive. For all mankind do not. 
The feelings of the majority of the primitive races, 
and of the people most familiar with the serpent 
species in abundance, are not chiefly feelings of fear 
and repulsion. The sight of a cobra with head 
raised aloft and ready to strike does not arouse 
in one the feeling of "snakiness,*^ but the rather of 
mysterious and respectful awe (the^essence of snake- 
worship.?). 

The express regulations and, indeed, the very 
constitution of the University of Bombay barred 
from lectures given under the auspices of the Uni- 
versity Senate any discussion of rehgious matters 
in dispute among the different affiliated colleges. 
But the topic announced for the course then in 
progress had been "The Philosophy of Mind." Now 
the nature of the mind or — to use the term familiar 
to the old-fashioned psychology — the soul, is of no 
merely speculative interest to the various religions, 
and even to the rival sects of Brahmans, in British 
and native India. It was, therefore, possible for 
the lecturer to treat of matters having the keenest 
theoretical as well as practical interest to all his 
audience, without necessarily arousing criticism for 
having transgressed the limits allowed him by his 
invitation. An audience so heterogeneous but highly 



Beautiful Bombay 37 

intellectual and keenly appreciative of nice distinc- 
tions and subtleties of argument would be difficult 
to find outside of India. The severity of the plague 
at the time had made it seem wise not to assembly 
as yet the undergraduates of the affiliated colleges. 
The text-books which had been the subject of con- 
troversy were set for examination in the M. A. 
courses. The audiences which gathered were, there- 
fore, chiefly those who had taken, or were preparing 
to take, these advanced courses ; they were, indeed, 
largely the professional men — lawyers, physicians, 
teachers in the government and missionary schools, 
— graduates who were in the government offices or 
in business, with a sensible number of Parsee and 
English ladies. There were Brahmans of various 
castes, Buddhists, Jains, Muhammadans, Jesuit 
Fathers, Christian missionaries, agnostic English- 
men, and perhaps a sprinkling of scoffers at all 
forms of philosophic opinion as useless attempts at 
the solution of insoluble and unimportant problems. 
The friends who had risked something in secur- 
ing the invitation — notably, the Vice-Chancellor and 
Father Bochum — were obviously somewhat nervous 
over the success of their scheme. But the audience, 
from the first, seemed satisfied; it increased by sev- 
eral score at the second lecture; then steadily held 
its own in numbers and attention to the end. At 
the close, it gave its "endorsement" in the form of 
the concluding address of the Vice-Chancellor, which 



38 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

the younger men supplemented in a more demon- 
strative way, — all of which afforded additional im- 
petus to the plan for opening the doors of approach 
to other opportunities in Northern and Southern 
India. 

Of excursions from Bombay there was only one 
which had any particular significance ; and this only 
by way of illustrating the amusing experiences which 
await the traveller essaying to untie a bunch of 
red tape in India, especially when the knot is held 
in native hands. We had received an invitation to 
visit the caves of Elephanta — Gharapuri, "town of 
the rock" or "of purification," as the natives call 
them — in the steam-launch of a friend kindly put at 
our disposal. But when, after some difficulty we had 
discovered the proper wharf for embarkation with- 
out breach of law, we were informed that we could 
not leave even for a picnic party on a neighboring 
island without a regular "health certificate." In vain 
we invoked common-sense, explained that we could 
not possibly convey plague to anything but the 
snakes on this uninhabited island, and offered to be 
inspected by the officer himself or to inspect one an- 
other. It was of no use. But we finally obtained 
permission to be examined by the health officer at the 
free anchorage. So away — and much out of our way 
— we steamed, dragging a small boat after us since 
the tide was to be low, and sought out a small craft 
somewhat like an exhausted and abandoned canal 
boat, moored in the shallow waters amidst a crowd 



Beawtifvl Bombay 39 

of exceedingly dirty native house-boats. Here was 
certainly a good place to get plague, if indeed it 
was the authorized place to be certified as still ex- 
empt from it. After a dignified delay the officer on 
board this disreputable craft gave us the required 
release. We steamed away disgusted, if not also 
infected. 

A detailed description of the caves of Elephanta 
may be found in the guide-books ; we reserve the 
narrative of how such remarkable structures look, 
and what they probably mean, for a subsequent 
visit to the much more unfrequented but notable and 
wonderful "caves of Ellora" in the dominions of the 
Nizam. 

It remains now to give some account of more or 
less confidential interviews which threw light on 
the less obvious situation in matters political and 
religious, at that time in India. 

When we had been in Bombay about a fortnight 
I received a call from Justice Ranade accompanied 
by a young man who seemed to act as a sort of 
secretary. Justice Ranade was at that time presi- 
dent of the Social Reform Congress, and the most 
distinguished and influential of the would-be re- 
formers in the Bombay Presidency. At first he 
seemed disinclined to talk of the political situation 
or of the plans for improvement formed or con- 
templated by the Association of which he was the 
president. 

On being courteously questioned, however, to 



40 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

favor me with his views, Justice Ranade began his 
reply by questioning me about Japan, and mani- 
fested the keenest and most intelHgent interest in 
all that I could tell him about the social and politi- 
cal condition and progress of this Oriental people. 
Even in his judicial mind, however, no clear cut defi- 
nite plans existed, as to just how the confessedly 
needed reforms were to be brought about in India; 
until, at least, there had been a great improvement 
in the character for probity, honorable spirit of 
self-respect and self-dependence, on the part of the 
educated natiVe population. In these important re- 
spects, India was then, and is now, very different 
from Japan. He urged my presence at the National 
Congress which was to meet at Lucknow, December 
26th-29th. With this invitation other engagements 
did not permit me to comply. 

A subsequent visit from Mr. Malabari was much 
more fruitful in informing and persuading the mind 
af the listener. Mr. Malabari was reckoned by all 
one of the most truly Christian (though not in 
name) reformers in all India. So profoundly trust- 
ed was he that, although he was a very frank and 
earnest critic of the British Government, it was said 
that his card would secure a private interview with 
the Viceroy in preference to almost any other man. 
Mr. Malabari was a Parsee; but his work had been 
principally for the political and social welfare of 
the Hindus. I summarize this most enlightening of 



Beautiful Bombay 41 

all confidential interviews touching such subjects, in 
the following points. 

(1) The worst and most hopeless cause of the 
social and spiritual degradation of the Hindus is 
the dreadful estate of their women. They have no 
respect or confidence on the part of their husbands 
and sons ; they are not fit to become wives and 
mothers. The chief and most difficult enemy of their 
intellectual and social elevation is the Brahmans, 
who keep the women ignorant and degraded, in 
order that they may maintain their influence over 
them and through them. The case of the Muham- 
madans is much better on the whole ; this is espe- 
cially true of the genuine Muhammadans of North- 
em India. In Bengal the Muhammadan is only a 
thinly varnished Hindu. In their circles there are 
many cases of much more of family life and of 
"spiritual" intercourse between husband and wife. 
The case of the Hindu in modern India has abun- 
dance of historical illustration everywhere in the 
whole earth. Everywhere it has been the priest and 
the woman who have been the so-called "conserva- 
tives," if combined for good, too often also com- 
bined as the enemies of all true progress. 

(S) The Parsees are in comparison with their 
numbers the most influential natives in India. But 
they are quite worldly and "unspiritual ;" in only a 
few families are the highest relations maintained 
between husband and wife. As to religion, a few 



42 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

of the old people are trying to maintain the ancient 
forms and doctrines which they consider orthodox. 
In fact; there is now no such thing among them as 
a pure ancient Zoroastrianism. They seem destined 
in the world at large to lose their distinctive char- 
acter and become absorbed in the Jews, Christians, 
Muhammadans, and Hindus, with whom they have 
intermingled. 

(3) Mr. Malabari expressed a high respect for 
the Hindu character. They are all — as of the very 
life-blood and most ancient tradition — practical 
philosophers, or "brooders'^ over the problems of 
reality, life and destiny. This is true of the cobly 
who earns his few pence by day and lies down in 
his cloth at night to think. His conclusion runs like 
this: "Am I poor and miserable.? Is death at my 
door, or already over the threshold.'^ What matters 
it? This is not my real life. It will soon be over. 
Why resent or resist it?" Mr. Malabari went so far 
as to say that he considered the Hindu character 
as much more akin and genuinely respondent to es- 
sential Christianity than is that of the Anglo-Saxon. 

(4) As to the British Government in India Mr. 
Malabari made some most striking observations. 
Never before have I heard anyone enunciate so 
clearly the truth to which I have persistently called 
attention in our own international relations. The 
conquered or subject lower races which stand in the 
relations of India to England, as to a superior and 



Beautiful BoTnhay 43 

dominant race, always serve as a downward drag. 
*'Todav," said he, "not only is India becoming 
Anglicized, but England is becoming Indianized. 
The vices of India are penetrating England at home. 
The many virtues of the English rule in India, and 
the obvious benefits of it are marred by arrogance 
of demeanor, and by a certain trickiness and excess 
of diplomacy where the interests of the Government 
are thought to be at stake. The higher officials are 
generally men of capacity and integrity of char- 
acter. But in the country and hill places, away 
from easy inspection, many of the English officials 
lead indecent lives, which greatly discredit Chris- 
tianity. 

In conclusion, Mr. Malabari expressed the opin- 
ion, in which not a few Western ethnologists agree, 
that a final product of really Christian civilization 
may some day arise out of the mingling of East and 
West. 

From another less lofty and "spiritual" point of 
view the British Government of India was being 
criticized severely that winter by the natives. One 
of the wealthy mill-owners had conducted us through 
his mills in which cloths of silk were made for 
Northern India, Burmah, and neighboring regions. 
These mills employed from eight hundred to nine 
hundred hands, at average wages of fifteen rupees 
(about five dollars) a month. Eight rupees will 
support a family of five in the meanest, most beastly 



44! Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

fashion; twelve rupees, in fair condition. Sir 
Jamsetjee gave a most gloomy account of the busi- 
ness conditions and prospects. Ruin had already 
met, or was staring in the face, the business men of 
Bombay. On January next all, or nearly all, the 
eighty mills of the city would be obliged to shut down 
and their 80,000 operatives would be out of work. 
"What," he asked, "with this and plague and famine 
is coming to this doomed city.? Meanwhile all the 
wealthy, instead of using their resources to meet the 
emergency, are asked to subscribe to the Transvaal 
war-fund. There, in South Africa, England is 
spending £200,000 a day in this most unnecessary 
war." In view of these and similar criticisms, how- 
ever just they seemed or really were at the time, 
it is most significant to note the loyalty of both 
India and South Africa in the present war. 

In the minds of the leaders and of the common 
people of India religion is most intimately, even 
inseparably, connected with all social and political 
affairs. Religion is the gift, the genius of the race. 
But the dominant religion of Hinduism has been 
degraded and even made vicious and repulsive by the 
doctrine and practice of caste. It should be under- 
stood that, so far as his religious views, apart from 
caste, are concerned, the Hindu is the freest of all 
men within the limits of his churchly communion. 
He may be any kind of a theist or pantheist, or even 
an atheist or a Christian, in his beliefs, and remain 



Beautiful Bomhay 46 

an orthodox Hindu, if he does not break caste. 
As has already been said, it is the priests and the 
women who hold in their hands the keys to the 
prison-house of caste. 

But religious reforms of various kinds and de- 
grees have been mooted and tried in India, through 
the centuries of its religious history, but especially 
of late years. For Buddhism and Jainism are both 
the results of attempts at the reform of Hinduism. 
He who does not understand something of the re- 
ligions and religious thoughts and feelings of the 
people of India, has not taken the first step toward 
a real understanding of anything in India. We 
must, then, make frequent observations and notes 
by the way, on this side of belief and life, as we 
travel together through India. 

It was before breakfast one November morning 
that I received a visit from a man whose "religious 
conversation" was so entertaining and instructive 
that an hour's delay at that meal was a most wel- 
come experience. I have seldom talked with any- 
one whose views on the profounder problems of 
Theism, revelation, and God's relations to the 
world, agreed more closely with my own than did 
those of Professor Bhandarkar of Bombay. But 
he criticized most frankly, though not bitterly, his 
own countrymen, who are kept back from receiving 
the truth from others or discovering it for them- 
selves, chiefly by intellectual indolence, — unwilling- 



46 Intvmate Glimpses of Life in India 

ness to think for themselves and a preference to fol- 
low tradition or any one of their own number who 
might set himself up for a leader, quite uncritically. 
Caste, pride, and a feeling of opposition to Euro- 
pean dominance in politics and in thought were other 
influences opposed to progress. 

That has happened to the religious reformers in 
India which is apt to happen to all reformers, re- 
ligious and otherwise, everywhere. They are con- 
tinually quarreling among themselves and breaking 
into subordinate sects. Since, however, the reform 
movement is much more intelligent and influential in 
Calcutta than in Bombay, and since in the later 
place we were brought into closer personal relations 
with the leaders of reform themselves, anything fur- 
ther on this important subject may well be post- 
poned. The particular theistic reform association 
about Bombay at that time was called "Parthana 
Somaj," or "Prayer Church." It comprised some 
excellent and noble men, but was not making much 
progress or exercising any considerable influence of 
any sort. 

A nobler band of missionaries does not exist upon 
the face of the earth than are to be found in British 
India ; and nowhere else are they so cordially wel- 
comed and actively assisted by the Government in 
power. Exceptions must, of course, be made, like 
the good old lady in Poona, who, on remarking with 
a pious demeanor that she was praying for Dr. 



Beautiful Bombay/ 47 

Barrows lest he might encourage too much the Viva 
Kananda party, and being told in reply, "Dr. Bar- 
rows is much obliged, for he needs all your prayers, 
and lie also will be praying for the missionaries of 
Poona," was speechless with surprise and dissatis- 
faction at the very thought. 

The friends who came to bid us good-bye when we 
left Bombay by the night train of December 15th, 
told us that the evening papers reported 200 as the 
toll exacted that day by the dread reaper. This 
required that the plague should be, somewhat offi- 
cially, pronounced "epidemic." But through all 
that dreadful winter the death-rate rose steadily 
until on certain days it reached the appalling total 
of 499. That it never once leaped over the barrier 
set by that one number, and reached a total of 500, 
seemed little less than due to some mysterious dic- 
tate in the councils of the angry gods. 



CHAPTER III 

TWO NOTABLE CEREMONIALS 

DURING our stay in Bombay we were present 
at two native ceremonials, one of which had 
never, and the other rarely or never, been witnessed 
by foreign eyes. The occasions of these ceremonials 
were as far apart as are death and marriage. In 
the one case the celebrants were a rather low caste, 
but wealthy Brahman; in the other, a Parsee couple. 
As in most Brahmanical ceremonials, so in this, a 
slavish but not altogether disinterested deference 
to the priest was displayed in ways to emphasize the 
wealth of the layman who could afford thus to con- 
trol the services of his religious superior. On the 
contrary, the Parsee wedding-ceremony was so con- 
ducted in the public grounds and buildings belonging 
to the religious community as to illustrate and sym- 
bolize the same principle of religious brotherhood 
which dominates the structure and ceremonies of the 
Towers of Silence. 

The invitation to the "Eleventh Monthly Cere- 
monial'^ in memoriam of the deceased wife of Mr. 
Tribhowandas Mungaldas Nathubai came in an ex- 

48 



Two Notable Ceremonials 49 

ceedingly unexpected and somewhat fortuitous man- 
ner. This function was very important in at least 
two different ways. It was the last and most im- 
posing of a series of such ceremonials ; and after 
its completion only was Mr. Tribhowandas at liberty 
to marry again. But since this was .to be his third 
venture, it was desirable when permission was ob- 
tained, to go through the not unpleasant fiction of 
being married to a sacred tree ! For the third mar- 
riage is very unlucky ; and the life or death of the 
bridal tree has nothing to do with the delay of 
marriage number four, or of any subsequent higher 
number. 

The invitation to the "Death Ceremonial" was 
given while we were engaged in the work of im- 
proving another invitation. We had been urged 
to visit the temples and burning-ghat of the Kapola 
Banian caste, of which our proferred escort was the 
president and principal lay-head in Bombay. This 
caste is chiefly composed of merchants ; but an an- 
cestor of Mr. Tribhowandas had been the principal 
founder and patron of the temples and their sur- 
roundings. It was explained in the carriage on the 
way that long ago there was a little temple on the 
spot at which the god Ram arrived when he was 
perishing with thirst. But he shot an arrow, and 
where it struck a mighty spring of water came to 
be. We were shown the spring as historical proof 
of the miracle; but our skeptical missionary friend 



60 Intimate Glvmpses of Life in India 

insisted that the spring was a cistern, and that the 
water was rain-water. In the "place of burning," 
all the bodies are cremated except those of the very 
young (children under eighteen months, or "until 
their teeth are cut"), and of the Yogis and very 
holy men. The children need no "purification by 
fire," since they have not sinned ; and the holy men 
have alread}^ attained the purity of soul necessary 
for entering Nirvana. But their skulls are crushed 
by a blow on the top, and this suffices to let escape 
the soul. On being questioned as to the meaning 
of Nirvana, Mr. Tribhowandas said that his caste 
generally consider it to be annihilation ; but he him- 
self could not subscribe to that, since nothing per- 
ishes ; all is endless motion. However, on defining 
himself further, he admitted that individual existence 
might cease ; but so much of God as constituted the 
soul would have to continue to be. 

In this burning-ghat, which is very old now and 
comparatively disused, — its possession seeming to 
be in a few of the more wealthy families, and so 
rather exclusive — there were perhaps twenty-five 
or thirty tombs and monuments. Some of them are 
raised to wealthy or distinguished members of the 
caste, who were not Brahmans or Yogis ; but in such 
cases there are no remains buried beneath. Others 
of them are tombs of devotees or saints, whose bodies 
may be buried underneath in a sitting posture. We 
were gravely informed that these holy men had so 



Two Notable Ceremonials 51 

lived that they had drawn their souls entirely into 
their heads; and so, when the blow which crushed 
their skulls was administered, the whole soul easily 
escaped upward. The apparatus for cremation was 
very crude: it consisted of two broad and large 
andirons and two iron posts about five feet high and 
two inches in diameter. These posts are erected 
at the comers of a square. On these andirons a pile 
of wood is laid and the cremation takes place ac- 
cording to a formula described in a pamphlet which 
our host had caused to be prepared. He was very 
careful to have us admire the tomb erected by him 
to his father, which took the shape of a drinking- 
trough for the sacred cows. 

We were next shown the temples, in all of which 
there prevailed the unwholesome mixture of magnifi- 
cence with filth and tawdriness which is so charac- 
teristic of Hinduism. Elaborate carved silver doors 
opened to disclose insignificant and cheap idols with- 
in. The idols were worshipped for our benefit with- 
out any difficulty; for they stood or sat still and 
seemed to pay no heed. But to worship the sacred 
cows properly was not so easy a matter. For to 
tell the sad truth, the cows did not seem to like to 
be worshipped. The one cow most amenable to this 
show of reverence immediately shook off the flowers 
laid on her head and the holy water poured upon 
her head, her back, and her four hoofs. 

Here we got our first sight close by of the lower 



52 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

and more disgusting grade of the so-called Yogi. 
Three of these devotees were encountered seated on 
the ground just opposite a temple to Shiva. One of 
them, an old man, was diligently reading a sacred 
text and did not deign to notice us. But the other 
two were ready enough to exhibit themselves. Nearly 
naked, smeared with ashes, with countenances half- 
way between idiocy and insanity, with matted long 
and filthy hair, they sat smoking an intoxicating 
drug. On being questioned as to the genuineness of 
their locks, with a leer, they shook out the snake-like 
braids and pulled at them violently to show that 
they would not come loose. 

In several of the temples, or shrines, the ling am 
was being made the object of worship; in one, it 
was carved profusely with blossoms of flowers, and 
in another a perpetual tiny stream of water was 
being poured upon it as a petition to the god of 
rain. The number of Brahmans thronging the place 
everywhere was large ; but more than half of them 
were boys who had apparently just been "initiated," 
as the sacred cord made of twenty-seven strands and 
thrown over the left shoulder plainly indicated. 

On the way home we received two additional in- 
vitations, one to allow the owner to exhibit his house 
that very afternoon; the other to come the follow- 
ing day and witness "the feeding of the Brahmans." 
On accepting the first of these invitations, we were 
greeted at the entrance by a daughter of our host, 



Twa Notable Ceremonials 63 

a very pretty girl of sixteen, whom her father had 
shown his independence by keeping unmarried until 
so late an age, and who carried herself with as 
modest yet self-possessed demeanor as would have 
been shown by a well-trained English girl of the 
same age. She remained in the immense drawing- 
room to which we at once ascended, even after the 
crowd of men belonging to the family had assembled 
to be introduced. But the married women did not 
appear until after the men had departed ; although 
they, too, came down the stairs and bade us "good 
night," even shaking hands with me. This distinc- 
tion between the woman's freedom of behavior with 
foreign gentlemen and with her own countrymen, is 
common in the best native social circles throughout 
India. In his case, Mr. Tribhowandas explained it 
by saying : "I belong to a very orthodox caste ; but I 
am myself very liberal in my actions." 

Mr. Tribhowandas, like Justice Ranade, expressed 
great admiration for the way in wliich Japan was 
making progress as a nation^ and he bitterly la- 
mented the lack of unity in India, while entertaining 
the hope of India's sometime becoming a united and 
independent people. 

If nothing especially interesting or informing came 
of the first of the two invitations given on the way 
home from the burning-ghat, the same thing cannot 
be said of that which bade us as onlookers to "the 
feeding of the Brahmans." For this enabled us to 



54! Inthnate Glimpses of Life in India 

witness an elaborate caste ceremonial which had 
never before fallen under observation by profane 
eyes. 

On arrival we were at once conducted by a ser- 
vant to our host, and by our host to the garden. 
Here about one hundred Brahmans of this caste 
were assembled, seated in a double row upon the 
ground, with a considerable number of their women 
and children seated apart. Most of the men had 
around their loins the silk cloth which signified that 
they were purified and ready to feast; but some — 
presumably the poorer — ^wore only a cloth of not 
very clean cotton. The feasting itself was viewed 
from the windows of the house which overlooked that 
part of the garden. A son of the host poured water 
from his hands upon the ground, after which a 
short mantra, called "Sankalpa'' or "an auspicious 
song," was chanted aloud. Each Brahman, before he 
began to eat, poured a little water and strewed a 
little rice upon the ground, as an offering to the 
earth; after which he "fell to'' in a manner to show 
that, with due opportunity offered, he could prove 
himself no mean "trencher man." The food con- 
sisted of fried flour-cakes, pulse soup, rice, several 
vegetable curries, and sweet-meats. They fed them- 
selves with their (purified?) fingers, and in drinking 
took pains that the water should be poured into the 
throat without being contaminated by touching the 
lips. One elderly Brahman was observed to be eat- 



Two Notable Ceremonials 55 

ing with the left hand only, the right being covered 
with a cloth. To eat only in some especially incon- 
venient fashion — for example, by carrying the hand 
to the mouth under the leg — is supposed to be 
especially meritorious. 

After witnessing the part of the ceremonial to 
which alone we had been duly bidden — namely, "the 
feeding of the Brahmans" — we were asked to re- 
turn to the drawing-room that we might take leave 
of our host, who had already left us to greet the 
Shankara-charya or high-priest of the sect who was 
to perform the "Death Ceremonial" according to the 
requirements of the Capola Bania caste. On taking 
Mr. Tribhowandas' hand, I asked, partly in a spirit 
of experiment, mixed with a certain amount of 
amused naivete, and partly with a quite legitimate 
and sympathetic curiosity, whether we (strangers 
and heathen) were to remain to any part of the 
ceremony. The question seemed to occasion no 
little embarrassment; but after a moment^s hesita- 
tion, the reply was, that inquiry would be made. I 
have no information as to how many extra rupees 
had to be bestowed upon the high-priest to obtain 
his consent; but when our host returned, to our 
great gratification and surprise, we were conducted 
to the place of honor on the right hand of the 
dais. 

It should be explained that, on passing through 
the drawing-room to reach the window from which 



66 Intimate Glimpses of Life m India 

the "feeding" was observed, we had been shown the 
details of arrangement for the religious ceremonial, 
and had had much of their meaning explained. 

The room prepared for the ceremonial was very 
large for a private house, being not less than forty 
by eighty feet in size. The great carpet in the 
center was folded back, so as to give access to the 
chairs and sofas arranged around the wall on the 
bare stone-floor; this was explained to be a precau- 
tion lest the woolen of the carpet should gather and 
transmit defilement to the holy men who might hap- 
pen to come in contact with it. At one end of the 
room a platform or dais was raised some five inches, 
and on it were two elegantly carved chairs and a 
sofa for the spiritual leader of the community. In 
front of the dais stood a round center-table. On 
the table was a silver salver, and on the salver small 
silver bowls containing milk, sugar, carmine pigment 
for the caste-mark, curds, rice, honey, and shredded 
saffron. Here also was a silver holder for incense- 
sticks, with the sacred figure of the elephant, a sil- 
ver censer, a small font with a ladle, and a bountiful 
supply of flowers. All these were for the worship 
of the Shankara-charya. 

Before the appearance of the high-priest, the 
rooms had been filled with the devotees of the caste, 
— the prominent Hindu males seated on the chairs 
and sofas ranged against the wall, the Brahmans on 
the floor, and just opposite us in a group apart, the 



Two Notable Ceremonials 157 

women ai>d children of the family. Not long after 
all were seated there was a slight commotion at the 
door, and the priest appeared with several at- 
tendants, one of whom carried a long silver mace in 
his hand, while another swung a brush of long hair 
over his sacred head, to warn away the flies. He was 
a strikingly handsome man of apparently about 
thirty-five years of age, — shapely in limb and with 
strong and manly features (evidently of pure Indo- 
Aryan stock). His cloth was of a light salmon 
color and his turban of the same color trimmed with 
gold. He strode rapidly forward across the car- 
pet, instead of avoiding it, although his feet were 
protected from pollution by wooden geta ; and at 
once seated himself in Turkish fashion upon the 
sofa. On his left hand stationed themselves the 
man with the silver mace, the Brahman who was to 
recite the ritual, and several other attendants. Be- 
hind him stood the boy with the brush diligently oc- 
cupied in keeping off the flies. The space in front 
of us was courteously kept clear in order that we 
might the better observe the ceremony. 

The "Death Ceremonial" (?) was begun by bring- 
ing in a large silver salver which was set down just 
below the feet of the priest, and on it his sandals, be- 
ing removed, were carefully and reverently placed. 
The priest then rested his right foot, now bare, upon 
the sandal, still keeping his left foot under him. Mr. 
Tribhowandas squatted on the dais at the right, 



68 Intwiate Glvmpses of Life m India 

and the ceremonial began by the Brahman in 
attendance, who was seated opposite, chanting 
rrmntraSy or sacred verses from the Sanskrit scrip- 
tures. Then followed the worship of the priest's 
right foot, particularly his right toe, with all the 
honors paid to any divine being among the Hindu 
divinities. This bodily member was crowned with 
blossoms of flowers ; and over it were poured stores 
of milk, curds, honey, and water: it was anointed 
with the kunku ( carmine^colored pigment); and 
from time it time it was respectfully wiped with a 
towel. This worship was performed both by our 
host and by the priestly attendant, or rather by our 
host in imitation of the attendant. For although 
Mr. Tribhowandas had published a pamphlet in his 
name treating of the whole aiFair, he did not seem 
himself to be very familiar with its details in an 
available practical way. This part of the cere- 
monial over, however, he had his own forehead 
anointed with the carmine mark of the caste, and 
then the same "sealing of the forehead" was offered 
to such of the faithful as desired to receive it. But 
it was noticed that an entire sofa full of the lay- 
brethren declined to be thus decorated. 

The next stage of this "Death Ceremonial" was 
undoubtedly more interesting to many of the spec- 
tators, and, it is not unlikely, to the Shankara- 
charya himself. It consisted in the distribution of 
gifts. About the shoulders of the high-priest was 



Two Notable Ceremonials 69 

thrown an exquisite camePs-hair shawl, of soft yel- 
low color with dark reddish embroidery ; and about 
the shoulders of the attendant Brahman a shawl 
of carmine color. Upon a silver plate Mr. Trib- 
howandas poured out a store of rupees, and was 
followed in this enforced "collection" by his sons 
and daughter, until no less than rupees fifty were 
piled upon the plate. Meanwhile, a largess of ten 
and a quarter annas was distributed to each of the 
Brahmans present. The extra quarter-anna was 
added in order that the gift, being properly some 
multiple of five, might be in "good measure, pressed 
down, and running over." Then garlands were 
thrown around the shoulders of the high-priest, a 
huge bouquet was placed in his hand; and the man 
with the silver mace cried with a loud voice: "'Sal- 
utation to the Maha-raja; let all the people do him 
reverence." At which the people gave a shout in 
response. 

It was, however, the concluding part of this amaz- 
ing ceremonial, which although it was most uninter- 
esting to the faithful present, was of all the most 
interesting to me. It was the sermon ; and this in 
most religious services that make much of cere- 
monial, is usually most uninteresting. For "sub- 
stance of doctrine," as it came to me when translated 
from Sanskrit into Hindustani and from Hindustani 
into English, if its substance (as I have no reason to 
doubt) was faithfully preserved, the claims of 



60 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

this Hindu priest were not radically variant from 
the claims made by the most rigidly orthodox of 
every sect of all the religions, in behalf of their 
own scriptures to be the sole possessors of infallible 
truth. Before beginning, the preacher sent to ask 
me on what topic I wished to have him discourse! 
Surely here was a test of good and ready crafts- 
manship, to which few of any similar craft would 
wish to expose themselves. But I was not to be 
outdone by the inquirer in the graciousness of my 
reply to the inquiry. "We should all wish him in 
this important matter to please himself." He then 
commenced speaking in the most fluent manner, tak- 
ing for his text a paragraph from the Vedas and 
then translating the paragraph from its original 
Sanskrit into Hindustani. After this he spoke in 
Sanskrit to the initiated only. 

The discourse began with praise of the Vedas, 
the sacred and infallible scriptures of the Hindu 
religion. The Vedas are the original, sole, and im- 
peccable source of true religion. They point out 
the way to salvation, and there is no other way than 
that which they point out. Whoever walks in this 
way and does as the Vedas instruct him, he has the 
true religion; he is safe; he will attain Nirvana. 
But whoever departs from this way, his religion is 
false, and he will not attain salvation but will surely 
be punished both in this life and in the life to come. 
But whereas most men are ignorant and cannot 



Two Notable Ceremonials 61 

understand the Vedas, and therefore cannot of them- 
selves know the way of salvation, the Brahman knows 
the way. He gives all his time, his entire life to the 
study of these things. He is therefore to be believed 
and obeyed, and his instructions are to be followed in 
every particular. He who disobeys the voice of the 
Brahman or refuses to learn of him, and follow in the 
path as the Brahman directs, he cannot find the way 
of salvation, but is of necessity blind and ignorant, 
and miserable in this life and in the life to come. 

As to the women, however, their chief duty and 
the summing-'up of religion for them, is to be 
obedient and faithful to their husbands. (It should 
be noted that just before the address began, some 
fifty or more women and children had come in at a 
side door and had seated themselves upon the car- 
pet, in front and at the side of the women and 
children belonging to Mr. Tribhowandas' immediate 
family. ) 

The discourse closed with a general and impas- 
sioned exhortation to abide faithful to their religion, 
to have confidence in its vast superiority to every 
other religion, and to show respect and obedience 
to the Brahmans. 

After the Shankara-charya had finished his ser- 
mon, he expressed willingness to answer any ques- 
tions or objections which miglit be proposed. At 
this an old man, a Vaidya or doctor of divinity, as 
though by arrangement beforehand, promptly arose, 



62 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

and repeated in Guzarati a part of what his spiritual 
superior had said. But the old man, as though he 
had enjoyed (?) an experience which had been spared 
the younger high-priest, waxed especially earnest 
and excited, and went into more abundant details, 
when he came to speak of the place and duties of the 
women. Not to disobey or cross the husband in any 
way was the special sacred duty of the woman. As 
for the child-wife, her duty was to be obedient to 
her mother-in-law. When the speaker reached the 
climax of his eloquence on this important practical 
doctrine, the audience of the faithful broke into ap- 
plause by clapping their hands. 

After this address was over, a young man, a mem- 
ber of the family, arose and thanked all present 
for their courtesy in attending these funeral cere- 
monies. Then, to my amazement, he branched off 
into a quite ill-fitting eulogy of me, who had done 
the family so much honor by consenting to be among 
those present. And as our host came up to shake 
hands and bid us good-bye, he assured us that we 
had enjoyed, in consideration of his dignity, and at 
his urgent request, an entirely unique privilege. We 
will let it stand in that way, — the debit of gratitude 
being altogether against ourselves. 

Some additional light may be thrown on this re- 
markable ceremony by the two remarks which fol- 
low. The Shankara-charya is, as the compound word 
signifies, a "spiritual leader'^ of the Shaiva sect. 



Two Notable Ceremonials 63 

There are four such guides belonging to this sect in 
Western India. There are dchardyds, or spiritual 
leaders, belonging to everj Hindu sect. By pre- 
eminence, one great organizer of the Shaiva sect was 
formerly called the "great," or Shankara-charya. 
But now the title is given to spiritual leaders of the 
first rank in the sect. The appointment is partly 
hereditary and partly by adoption or selection. 

The entire performance as witnessed at the house 
of Mr. Tribhowandas seemed totally lacking in even 
the formal expression of the feelings which in West- 
ern minds would suggest that it was an appropriate 
"Death Ceremonial." And indeed, it was not so 
regarded by those who took the principal part in it. 
It was, the rather, the formal recognition of the 
Brahmanical doctrine "The All-One is incarnate in 
the Brahman ; the Brahman is therefore a proper 
object of divine worship." The way to worship is 
not spiritual, but purely ceremonial; and he who 
performs the ceremonial, according to Brahmanical 
regulations, acquires merit, for the body of the 
Acharaya, even his toe, is deity incarnate. 

The other equally interesting, though by no 
means equally unique, ceremony at which we were 
present during our stay in Bombay, was a Parsee 
wedding held in the buildings and grounds of the 
community. The invitation came from Sir Jam- 
set jee Jejeebhoy, who sent his carriage to take us 
to the place appointed. The entire "plant" — so to 



64 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

say — was the gift of a wealthy Parsee to the Parsee 
community, and was made some years ago. It con- 
sists of two houses, each with at least one capacious 
room on the ground floor, a hall for feasting, and 
considerable open space between the two houses, — 
all surrounded by a wall. 

On entering the yard we found a large com- 
pany already assembled and seated in chairs in the 
open air; indeed, the whole yard was nearly filled 
with invited guests and the members of the com- 
munity. Among the former were a few Muham- 
madans and Hindus and one European besides our- 
selves. With few exceptions, all were dressed in 
white, which is the proper ceremonial dress or wed- 
ding-garment. A band of a dozen or fifteen instru- 
ments — mostly brass — stood playing in the space 
just in front of where the bride and her family 
friends were waiting for the groom. On inquiry, 
we were told that all those seated without were the 
male friends and acquaintances of the groom, — an- 
other proof that the business interests of the Parsees 
are widely extended and are not confined wholly 
to those of their own class. The ladies of his family 
were waiting in "the house of the bridegroom ;" but 
right across the avenue between the rows of chairs 
which had been left open for the procession of these 
female friends, sat the bridegroom and the officiating 
high-priest. The groom appeared dressed as were 
the other Parsees present, except that over his arm 



Two Notable Ceremonials 65 

hung a creamy white Chudda shawl with a Persian 
border ; while a similar garment was conspicuously 
thrown over the shoulder of the high-priest. 

Soon after our arrival, the band marched from its 
station to and through the front entrance into the 
street, and took up its place opposite the bride's 
house. The company of the assembled guests fol- 
lowed, leaving the groom and the priest, with the 
more immediate attendants still standing at their 
post. We had been, with the greatest politeness, 
conducted into the house where the ceremony was to 
be performed and seated in the most favorable place 
for observing and hearing all. 

On entering the house we found it already well 
filled with girls and women, who were said to be the 
most immediate friends of the bride. In two cor- 
ners of the room was a group of five or six hired 
singers, who chanted in rather melancholy fashion 
good wishes for the couple and laudations of the 
virtues of the bride. But we were scarcely seated, 
when we were invited to go to the door and see a 
most interesting bit of the ceremonial. This con- 
sisted of the reception and consecration of the bride's 
presents. For to inspect and comment upon these 
tokens (?) of the family's prosperity and the popu- 
larity of the bridal couple is not made the con- 
spicuous thing in this country alone. At a Chinese 
wedding much of the bridal procession consists of 
hired attendants bearing aloft the presents, cakes 



66 Intvmate Glhnpseg of Life in India 

and roast pig and all. The display was more modest 
in this case. For behind a bevy of a dozen pretty 
Parsee maidens came two serving women carrying 
the precious store. While these stood waiting on the 
upper step just outside the door, the bride's sister 
came forward with a small silver platter, on which 
an egg was broken and a handful of rice strewn. 
This mixture was sprinkled (but only symbolically) 
over the presents, which were then handed over to 
the bride. 

Water was also sprinkled on the floor, and white 
chalk was scattered through a sort of stencilled plate 
over a space of the floor some two and a half feet 
by one foot in size. A low wooden platform — ap^ 
parently to prevent the bride from wetting or soiling 
her white satin slippers — was then placed over this 
decorated space, upon which the bride took her 
stand. The formal presentation of the presents 
was conducted in this way. In her extended palms 
were laid the choice silks, and over her neck was 
thrown the string of precious pearls. The cones 
of sugar covered with paper of gold and garlanded 
with flowers were left standing on the salver. 

Scarcely was this performance finished when we 
were again summoned to the door to witness the ar- 
rival of the bridegroom, who already stood waiting 
on the step outside. Over him a cocoanut was 
broken for good luck; and to signify plenty, water 
and rice were sprinkled over him, — this time actually, 
though in small quantities. He then, attended by 



Two Notable Cerelmonials 67 

the priest and followed by the assistants, entered 
the room and seated himself right in front of and 
facing the bride, the back of whose chair was turned 
toward us. Two priests held in front of him a wide 
piece of white silk, which acted as a screen between 
him and the bride, who was now formally again con- 
ducted to her seat. This well signified that the 
groom "took her without seeing her," or as we 
should say: "For better or for worse." And now, 
under the silken screen the hands of the pair were 
joined by the high-priest, and around the bodies of 
the two was wound a long scarf of white silk. The 
"tying of the knot" was further completed by wind- 
ing cotton cord from a new ball of yarn, seven times 
around the bodies of both. This "pairing," al- 
though the occasion of it was so antipodal, reminded 
us of that to which we had been witnesses in the pro- 
cession that was ascending the steps of the Towers 
of Silence at the time of our visit to the place where 
the Parsees dispose of the bodies of their departed 
friends. "Till death us do part;" yes, and even 
after, if the seven-fold cord is not too easily broken. 

Before the screen was removed, the priests 
chanted in both Sanskrit and Zend prayers for 
the welfare and unity of the two. Then incense was 
fired in a large brazen vessel, held just behind and to 
the left of the groom; and the hired singers broke 
out into a loud song of well-wishing for the newly 
married pair. 

But the ceremony was by no means over yet. The 



68 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

occasion must be improved b}'- a sermon of quite half 
an hour in length. The silken screen was now re- 
moved ; the bride was seated in the same chair beside 
the groom and on his left ; and the white scarf was 
moved up on to his right shoulder and allowed to slip 
down over her right thigh, — as one person would 
wear a scarf of the same kind. Then the priest 
stationed himself in the full front of the couple and, 
momently throwing at them a grain or two of rice, 
chanted first in Zend and then in Sanskrit the 
moral maxims and exhortations fitted to a newly 
married pair. 

At the end of the sermon, the entire ceremonial 
was quickly finished with the fatherly blessing of the 
high-priest. We were then allowed to congratulate 
the newly married couple in the Western fashion by 
shaking hands ; after which, to our great surprise, 
we were conducted to the Hall where the wedding 
feast was spread, and were seated at the bride's 
table on her right. It would doubtless have been 
most pleasant and instructive could we have re- 
mained to the end of the feast ; but another engage- 
ment called us away when we had just had time to 
touch our lips to a glass in honor of the bride's 
health. 

On asking why the entire spoken part of the wed- 
ding ceremony was given first in the Zend language 
— popularly though erroneously supposed to be that 
of the Avesta, or ancient Parsee scriptures, — and 



Two Notable Ceremonials 69 

then repeated in Sanskrit, the ancient and sacred 
language of the Vedas, the Hindu scriptures, I was 
given this explanation : When the Parsees first came 
to India, they were allowed to remain only on these 
conditions : that they should refrain from beef, in 
deference to the Hindus, from pork, in deference 
to the Muhammadans ; and that they should use 
both languages, in order to prevent the possibility 
of intrigue and conspiracy. 

The Parsees do not approve of early marriages, 
as do the Hindus. Unless the male is eighteen and 
the female sixteen, the marriage is not legal accord- 
ing to their law. But at this very ceremony there 
was present a little, slender Hindu girl, who could 
not have been over twelve years of age, but who 
was obviously within a short time to become a 
mother. We recalled the statement of Mr. Malabari 
that, in general, the Hindu women are neither physi- 
cally nor mentally fit to become wives and mothers. 

To the watchful eye there were evidences on this 
occasion, as on every other where one comes into 
closer social contact with the one hundred thousand 
Parsees of India, that they are rapidly becoming 
Europeanized. Although the grounds and build- 
ings where this marriage was celebrated belong to 
the community, and can be rented for an entire day 
for a single rupee and the bare expense of the 
lighting, the wealthier Parsees prefer being "mar- 
ried at home" to being "married in church." Even 



70 Intimate Glvmpses of Life in India 

in this church ceremony, the use of the ring, the 
wearing of orange flowers, and other particulars, 
were European modifications. And that has hap- 
pened with the Parsees, which always happens under 
similar conditions ; there has arisen a division into 
a more strictly orthodox and a more liberal and pro- 
gressive sect. One aged Parsee came up to us after 
the ceremony was finished and assured us in a grieved 
voice: "This was not at all the true and ancient 
Zend ceremony." 

Two impressions stamped upon our minds by 
these notable ceremonials in a somewhat violent way 
were confirmed and deepened by numerous experi- 
ences during that winter in India. Most of the 
ceremonials, of whatever sort, and whether as prac- 
ticed by the priests or by the people, are practiced 
and prized as matters prescribed by custom which 
it is inconvenient or dangerous to avoid, or through 
which "merit" may be won and stored, rather than 
as the sincere and intelligent use of rites and sym- 
bolism to express and cultivate genuine religious 
thought and feeling. In the death ceremonial not a 
trace of genuine affection for the dead, or of hope 
of future meeting, or of need for every individual to 
expect and prepare for the same event, or of faith 
in the eternal validity of right relations between 
God and the human soul, was anywhere to be dis- 
cerned. In the wedding ceremony, although it was 
celebrated as a sacrament needing priestly assistance 



Two Notable Ceremonials 71 

and consecration that it might obtain the favor of 
heaven, and meant to be a true and lasting union of 
souls, the underlying attitudes, appropriate of mind 
and heart and will, were not more manifest than they 
are at many a church-wedding in our own land. 

But there is another side to all this, full of sig- 
nificance as to the past, and full of hope as to the 
future. The common people of India are today 
more essentially religious than are the people of 
the United States. These rites and symbols mean 
essentially this : All human life and all its events — 
birth, marriage, the begetting and bearing of chil- 
dren, the daily life in the family or before the public, 
and death and what comes after have religious mean- 
ing and religious value. The divine is never and 
nowhere, and on no occasion, to be considered as 
separate from, or a matter of no concern to, the life 
of man. When the beliefs throw oif their supersti- 
tions, and the imperious dominance of the priest- 
hood is changed to the helpful spirit of brotherly 
kindness, and the power of caste is broken, then we 
believe that the Orient will, mayhap, become again 
the leader of the world, in the purity and force of 
its religious fervor. 



CHAPTER IV 



A MODEL NATIVE CITY 



WPIEN we awoke the morning after leaving 
Bombay, we were passing through a region 
sorely afflicted with famine. The Province of 
Guzerat is ordinarily "The Garden of India" and its 
Capital, Ahmedabad, is one of the most flourishing 
of the ancient native cities. But now, with the ex- 
ception of inconsiderable sections around the few 
wells that still yield a scanty supply of water, the 
land is inconceivably desolate. White dust, a small 
number of fruitless bushes of cotton, withered cac- 
tus hedges, and occasional groups of trees which 
look as though they were themselves "panting for 
the water brooks," comprise the landscape that from 
the car windows meets the eye. Of animal life there 
are only some lean buffalos, which are being kept 
alive on what remains of dry stubble and the smaller 
twigs and leaves of the trees. All the other cattle 
are dying or already dead. In the fields are famine 
camps, around which skeletons of men and women 
are languidly doing a bit of work, or are wandering 
about in the fields, digging roots for their own food. 

72 



A Model Native City 73 

or gathering stubble for fuel or for feeding the buf- 
falos. The only suggestions of real and vigorous 
life are the monkeys, which are perched in the bar- 
ren trees, or sitting stolidly by the track, or gam- 
boling across the fields. Yet the mother monkeys 
are illustrating one of the two kinds of faith into 
which Hindu humor of the religious type divides this 
attitude of mind. For there is "cat-faith" and there 
is "monkey-faith." In the former, the parent seizes 
the offspring by the nape of the neck and carries it 
— volens aut nolens — to a place of safety: in the 
latter kind of faith, the offspring clings around the 
parent's neck and so escapes the threatened danger. 
Surely, not only the pious but all the people of 
Guzerat, need both kinds of faith in the present 
hour. 

We broke our journey for an over Sunday at 
Ahmedabad, "once the greatest city in India," and 
said to have been from 1573 to 1600 "the handsomest 
town in Hindustan, perhaps in the world." In Sir 
Thomas Roe's time, 1615, we are told: "It is a 
goodly city, as large as London." We were for 
our stay, the guests of Dr. and Mrs. Taylor. Since 
the magnificence of Ahmedabad consists chiefly in 
the character of its mosques and tombs, built and 
embellished by its Mogul emperors, and since all this 
is to be seen in yet more magnificent and well-pre- 
served form, in Agra and Delhi, we shall not dwell 
upon the wonderful stone carving of Rani Sipris' 



74 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

tomb and mosque, "the gem of Alimedabad ;" or 
upon the delicate beauty of the elaborate structures 
in memory of Shah Alam, — who was not, indeed, a 
political ruler but a religious teacher. [The dome 
of the tomb had been whitewashed (?) by the enter- 
prising government officer, who appears to go in 
for "revenue only"; but the Viceroy, on a recent 
visit, had strongly protested at this agsthetical out- 
rage and had ordered the whitewash removed.] 

The chief conquest of our stay in Ahmedabad was 
some slight insight into the Jain religion, and a 
particularly intimate view of Hati Singh, which is 
perhaps the most splendid of the Jain temples in all 
India. These special favors were procured for us 
by Mr. Manibai, whose grandfather had founded the 
temple some fifty years before at a cost of a million 
and a half rupees, and who seemed to have received 
instructions from his brother in Bombay to show 
us every possible attention. 

On Sunday morning two brothers who were sup- 
posed to be scholars in the tenets of the Jain re- 
ligion, and in its history, called for the express pur- 
pose of answering all the questions which I might 
wish to ask of them. I cannot vouch for the ac- 
curacy of the Sunday-school lesson given to me that 
morning ; since Dr. Taylor, who acted as interpreter 
had great difficulty in getting from my teachers any 
clear definition of the terms they were employing; 
and since almost everything they said has been a 



A Model Native City 76 

matter of endless disputation among the doctors of 
the various sects into which its creed has broken up. 
But according to the claim of these student-teachers, 
Jainism originated before Buddhism ; and, indeed, 
Shakya-Muni was himself at the third remove from 
the twenty-third Tirthankar, or Saintly founder of 
Jainism. The Jains, therefore, are true transmitters 
of the pure Aryan religion. But the Brahmans have 
corrupted this religion. 

The reform which Jainism inaugurated empha- 
sized these three things : ( 1 ) Revolt from the rule of 
the Brahman; for salvation is not necessarily 
through him; but "as a man soweth, so shall he 
reap." (2) To abstain from all killing, which — 
even that of the animals — is forbidden as being mur- 
der. But (3) in secular matters, such as mar- 
riage, the Jain may resort to the aid of a Brahman. 

Positively, the religion of the Jains emphasizes 
both good understanding and good faith and good 
works. The word which my teachers used for faith 
really meant "insight" or "vision," and so seemed 
not to differ materially from good understanding. 
But they explained it rather as confidence in, and 
obedience to, the six Tirthankars, or spiritual guides 
of the community. Besides these, the community has 
a store of Sarus, or holy men and women, who serve 
as examples and teachers. The end of it all — as in 
Brahmanism and Buddhism — is to attain Nirvana 
(salvation) ; but the Way of Salvation is, more 



76 Intimate Glimpses of Life m India 

especially, to keep the twelve vows, of which the first 
five are fundamental and constitute the minimum re- 
quired of every true Jain. They are the Mahar- 
ratas, or great vows ; and to these there is universal 
agreement. But as to the remaining seven, there 
is variety of opinion; even my informants differed 
from some of the books, including one written by a 
Jain of Guzerat. 

During our stay in Ahmedabad this theoretical 
exposition of the doctrines of Jainism was sup- 
plemented by a spectacular exhibition of its cere- 
monial. Mr. Manibai himself conducted us to the 
temple of Hati Singh and had the Asti or evening 
wave-offering from the five-flamed lamp performed 
for our special benefit. Of the temple's architecture 
two features seemed to me especially beautiful. 
These were the colonade which surrounds the entire 
temple-enclosure, and on the exterior walls of which, 
but opening inwards, are the shrines of the twenty- 
four Tirthankars ; and the several arches over the 
porches, which seemed veritably to be poured forth 
upward from the mouths of the elephant-heads that 
rested on the posts of the porch. Peering through 
the carved doors in front of the shrines we could 
see the images of the saints ; they were made of dif- 
ferent kinds of stone — mostly marble — and their 
eyes looked as though they were crystals with spec- 
tacles over them! Much of the carving of the tem- 
ple was beautiful and appropriate to a building for 



A Model Native City 77 

religious service ; but some of it was as grotesque and 
inappropriate — for example the Nautch girls danc- 
ing — as is much of the carving on the stalls of some 
of the cathedrals of England. 

Just inside the temple door was the shrine of the 
founder, whose image, resembling that of the 
Tirthankars and of the god of the temple, and the 
images of his two wives, appeared behind a screen 
in the form of a two-leaved door. This particular 
deity, to which the temple is dedicated, is Dhar- 
manath, the "lord of religion." Before the begin- 
ning of the service Dr. Taylor warned us not to be 
frightened at the noise. The priest then advanced 
and took up a lamp of peculiar shape with five wicks 
burning; and at once there began the mingled clang- 
ing of a large and rather harsh bell and the rub-a- 
dub of an enormous drum. The ceremony consisted 
in waving the lamp in a sort of circular motion, just 
outside the shrine but in front of the enshrined idol ; 
while the bell and the drum seemed to be engaged 
in a frenzied effort to drown the low mutterings of 
the priest and the other four or five worshippers. 
Part of this ceremony reminded one of the "wave- 
offering" in the Temple of the Hebrews at Jerusa- 
lem. 

The Jains — their number reaching nearly a mil- 
lion and a half — are one of the most numerous of 
the heretical sects in all India. They are largely 
traders and many of them have acquired consider- 



78 Intimate Glvmpses of Life vn India 

able wealth. This fact, of course, secures for them 
influence of a certain kind, but they are, not un- 
naturally, despised and hated by the leaders of 
orthodoxy in the different Hindu castes. Their 
claim to antedate Buddhism is probably false; but 
when Buddhism had become corrupted and had been 
largely banished from India by persecution, the 
simpler and less pronounced revolt against priestly 
tyranny and the doctrine of salvation by ceremonial 
came more to the front and appealed to the common 
people. Their particular boast in the way of practi- 
cal piety is the strictness with which they regard 
and practice the commandment: "Thou shalt do no 
murder." For, in the case of the strictly orthodox 
Jain, the command protects the insects which get 
into the food, the musquitos which buzz about the 
ears, and the moths that flit about the lamp or 
candle. Thus Mr. Manibai, being orthodox as be- 
came the chief patron of the temple, excused himself 
from acting as our escort, in order that he might 
get to his home and take his evening meal before 
twilight. But how do such scruples "jibe with" 
the duties of religion, now that modern science has 
evolved its theories of bacteria, micro-organism, 
etc.f^ As nearly as possible after the fashion of the 
Hindus who, not desiring to incur the enmity of 
the spirits of deceased cobras and their enraged an- 
cestors, have their servants carefully gather up the 
young snakes in some covered receptable and place 
them in the compound of the nearest foreigner. 



A Model Native City 79 

But the observations of this part of our journey- 
ing through India were not so much directed to mat- 
ters of rehgion as to matters of politics. The next 
stop was to be at Jaipur (or Jeypore), one of the 
most interesting and prosperous of all the native 
cities. The government was chiefly "paternal," in 
the stricter meaning of the word. And a decidedly 
paternal government under a native ruler is un- 
doubtedly still most suited to the natives of India ; 
— only, however, if the ruler is an unselfish, wise 
and good man, and if he and his people can be kept 
from corrupting foreign influences. But in these 
days, in India, in the Philippines, or anywhere else 
where conditions are at all similar, to secure such a 
ruler and such exemption — ah! that is indeed "the 
rub." 

As we went northward the signs of most extreme 
famine, and of the barrenness it brings, somewhat 
diminished. More cattle and goats seemed to be 
still alive ; more green spots were around the wells ; 
fewer skeletons were wandering through the parched 
fields ; and in some fractions of acres a veritable 
handful of grain was growing. 

We tumbled out of our berths to dress and pack 
up in the dark the next morning. On getting from 
the train we were handed two letters, one from Col. 
Jacobs, the "Resident" who represented the over- 
sight of the British Government in that region, and 
one from our missionary host. The former invited 
us to dinner, but gave the disappointing informa- 



80 Intvmate Glimpses of Life im, India 

tion that a disease which had broken out among the 
elephants would prevent the coveted trip to Mount 
Amber; the other note apologized for not b^ing 
able to meet us in person, but put us into excellent 
hands. We were at once given a breakfast of toast 
and tea (what in India is called chota hazri or 
"little breakfast*') and then taken to the three- 
roomed tent which had been set up on the com- 
pound for our accommodation. This accommoda- 
tion was highly fortunate, if there is any truth in 
what the two principal hotels were saying about 
each other on the printed cards handed to us upon 
alighting. The experience of most tourists of India 
will confirm my suspicion that each hotel was telling 
the truth about the other, but not about itself. I 
quote a sentence from each, to show that such enter- 
prise is not confined to the United States, but has 
even reached the northern part of a distant and very 
differently peopled continent. One testimonial of 
the KAISER-I-HIND HOTEL read as follows : "On 
arriving at Jaipur I was driven to Rustom's Family 
Hotel, but had to leave it owing to its inconvenient 
surrounding and indifferent cuisine. The Kaiser-i- 
Hind is a vast improvement on it. The rooms are 
far cleaner, the feed better and the manager more 
civil." But the other signed testimonial affirms: 
"Removed from the Kaiser-i-Hind and stayed at 
RUSTOM'S with my wife and family for a few 
days, and have nothing but praise to say of the 



A Model Native City 81 

place — extremely comfortable and clean, and food 
all that could be desired, a great change to the 
Kaiser-i-Hind Hotel, the Manager of which was 
rude and impertinent to me." Between these two 
complaints we could not choose, — having neither de- 
sire nor opportunity to sample either hotel. 

The physical lay and surroundings of the native 
city of Jaipur are so remarkable and so necessary 
to an understanding of its present political condi- 
tion and its political history, that some more de- 
tailed account of them should be given. The ancient 
capital Amber, five miles from the more modern 
capital, the city of Jaipur, gives us the key to an 
understanding of all this. Amber is situated at the 
mouth of a rocky mountain gorge, and at the foot 
of a lovely mountain lake. On all sides except the 
South, where the modern capital lies in a richly 
cultivated and extensive plain. Amber is surrounded 
by rugged hills crowned with forts. At the end of 
the ridge of hills is the so-called "Tiger Fort," and 
the side of the ridge turned toward the plain on 
the South is scarped and made inaccessible from that 
direction; but behind it, in its nest surrounded by 
natural and artificial fortifications, with a plenti- 
ful supply of living water easy to defend, nestles the 
ancient capital of this Province. The "old place," 
begun in 1600 (nothing is really very old in India, 
compared with the antiquity of Egypt and Baby- 
lon or even of Greece and Rome), lies low on the 



82 Intimate Glimpses of Life m India 

slope of the hill, and is a grand and impressive pile. 
Its suites of rooms rise one above another, and form 
vistas opening on striking views. On the higher ter- 
race are the apartments of the Maharaja, which are 
entered by a gateway covered with mosaics and 
sculptures, over which is a small pavilion with rarely 
beautiful latticed windows. In the Treasury, there 
are fabulous but perhaps not altogether incredible 
stories of the immense amounts of gold and jewels 
hoarded up. The beginnings of the native strong- 
hold reach far back in history. Amber is said to 
be mentioned by Ptolemy. 

While the ancient city is largely in ruins, the 
modern city of Jaipur is flourishing, well-preserved 
and well-governed, and by no means lacking in 
features of magnificence quite its own. For the 
Royal House of Jaipur has been, on the whole, pe- 
culiarly favored as respects its native princes, ever 
since Jai Singh II founded Jaipur in 1728. The 
Raja of the time when we were there, so far as 
signs appeared obvious to foreign eyes, seemed a 
ruler not unworthy to be the descendant of the best 
of his ancestors. At any rate, not being acquainted 
with, or empowered to go behind the curtain and see, 
the real actors, whether in the comedy or the tragedy 
of government, and so decide how much credit was 
due to native Rajas and how much to British Resi- 
dents, we will be content to tell what we saw. And 
what we say seemed to us important testimony to 




A WISE PATERNAL GOVERNMENT 



A Model Native City 83 

the excellences of a good and wise paternal goverrir 
ment, administered by the native princes under the 
friendly and kindly advisement and assistance of the 
prevalent foreign control. 

Our first visit was to the Museum where we re- 
ceived a most cordial welcome from the native chief- 
attendant in charge. He had read of the lectures 
in Bombay and was most effusive — native like — in 
his compliments. On the ground-floor of this build- 
ing is an interesting and large collection of art- 
work, — especially of the metal and textile work of 
India, but almost exclusively modem. In the lec- 
ture-room of the Museum, examinations for the Gov- 
ernment College were at the time being held. For 
public instruction has made greater progress in 
Jaipur than in any other states of Rajputana. The 
College is affiliated with the University of Calcutta. 
It was opened in 1844 with only about forty pupils ; 
but at the time of our visit the number had already 
risen to more than a thousand in daily attendance; 
and in the quality of its work and its success in 
preparing its students for the University examina- 
tions, it did not need to fear comparison with other 
institutions of its kind throughout the Empire. 
From the roof of the building the whole situation 
of the Maharaja's dominions and the wisdom of his 
ancestor, Jai Singh II, became plainly visible. For 
there was the semi-circle of fortified hills which sur- 
round the ancient citadel of Amber, with its palaces 



84 Intimate Glvmpses of Life in India 

and treasury, and through the only gap in which an 
ample supply of excellent water flows from the moun- 
tain lake. And there was the fertile plain stretching 
far away outside the walls of the more modem 
city of Jaipur, within which the cultivators of those 
plains could drive their cattle, carry their valu- 
ables, and betake themselves for defence in case of 
attack from their ruler's enemies. 

From the Museum we were driven to one of the 
workshops where such things as the Museum dis- 
played were manufactured and could be purchased 
to the best advantage. A narrow street under an 
archway led into an exceedingly dirty court strewn 
with bricks and piles of stone and other debris. 
From one corner of the court rose a stone stair- 
case which led to balconies running around the 
courtyard ; and here were tables on which the owner 
who rejoiced in the name of Zoroaster, and was 
doubtless a Parsee, displayed his repousse silver 
and inlaid metal work, his silk cloths and embroid- 
eries. In rooms opening ofi* the court below, boys 
were at work in the various kinds of industry, — 
among others, in weaving the woolen carpets (India 
rugs) the owner was sending to the United States. 

But the title to fame as a wise and able ruler 
which may be claimed by Jai Singh II was not left 
dependent on his political doings alone; for he was 
a patron of science and "a royal astronomer" as 
well. A visit to the palace and palace grounds of 



A Model Native City 85 

the present Raja would not have been half complete, 
if we had not left the carriage for a nearer and 
closer inspection of the famous Jantra or Observa- 
tory, which is the largest of the five built by the 
aforesaid Jai Singh. This Jantra is not under cov- 
er, but is an open courtyard in which are the remains 
of the most curious and fantastic collection of 
mathematical and astronomical instruments which 
the world contains. Here are dials, gnomons, 
quadrants, and other immense structures the in- 
tended use of which it is difficult to conjecture — for 
very likely, the science of this astronomer had a 
mixture of astrology in it, as was not uncommon 
everywhere at that time. These instruments include 
huge structures of stone masonry. But that the 
collection served, in general, good purposes of a 
scientific character in the hands of this royal as- 
tronomer, is established beyond all dispute by the 
many wonderfully accurate measurements and cal- 
culations which they enabled him to make. Tlie 
largest of the sun-dials records with accuracy a 
change of two and a half inches in the movement of 
the shadow for every minute of the sun's time. And 
there is little difficulty in dividing that space into 
sixty parts to mark the single seconds. Indeed, it is 
of record that by the use of this dial an eclipse of 
the sun was in the maker's time predicted as ac- 
curately as could then be done by the astronomers 
of Europe. 



86 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

At Jaipur the provisions for alleviating and pre- 
venting the sufferings of the people from both 
famine and plague were far and away the best 
which we saw in all India. But some of them were 
such as only a wise and benevolent paternal govern- 
ment, having the confidence and quasi-filial affec- 
tion of its subjects, could undertake or acliieve. 
Like the king of Egypt in Joseph's time, the Raja 
had made a huge collection of grain to meet the 
future wants of the people. But he did not need 
to store it in granaries, for no rain was to be ex- 
pected in Northern India in the winter season; and 
as to thieves, a slight patrol of gendarmes provided 
against them, if any of the people were so dis- 
posed. Long, high piles of bags of grain were 
stretched through the middle of streets. In this 
way the people were assured that they need not 
fear being deceived by the Government, when they 
were told there should be enough for them to eat 
and, at least, they need not fear to die of starvation. 
The same paternal authority fixed the price of this 
grain, so that the "rice merchants" (a term of bit- 
terness and opprobrium in India and indeed some- 
what widely through the entire Orient) should not 
oppress the poor by putting up the price of food. 
The Government had also gone through the kindly 
fiction of saving the cattle from slaughter or death 
by starvation, by buying them at a fair price, and 
when the time for the Spring plowing came, these 



A Model Native City 87 

necessities of agricultural industry in India were 
to be sold back to their former owners, without 
advance in price and on easy terms of payment. 
Even in these famine times in Jaipur the revenues 
will meet the expenses ; and large accumulations of 
gold and jewels are said to be still available in the 
treasury. 

The same superiority was even more manifest in 
the management of the government hospital and 
poor-house. These institutions were in every way 
better than those we had seen at Ahmedabad. There, 
the poor-house had formerly been a prison. Into its 
narrow and unsanitary quarters had been gathered 
514 famished men, women and children. They were 
in all stages of starvation. For the well (if any 
could be counted such) the Government provided the 
shelter of a roof and twice a day a scanty supply 
of food. They lay, however, on the ground on 
mats, wrapped only in such rags as they happened 
to have, or in a piece of hempen cloth furnished as a 
cover for their nakedness. At Ahmedabad only the 
sick had a cot and a blanket furnished them. Eighty- 
six were counted among the sick. But the hos- 
pital at Jaipur was clean, not over-crowded, well- 
equipped, and at its head was a thoroughly educated 
native doctor with a sufficient corps of assistants. 
In the poor-house the food was sufficient and, from 
the native standpoint, fairly good; and all were 
furnished with blankets. 



88 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

In these matters and at such trying times, as al- 
ways and everywhere, it is the attitude of the people 
toward their Government that chiefly counts. At 
Ahmedabad, the people would not work to draw the 
water from the wells through the summer months, 
when something of their crops could have been 
saved; and now many of them begged or died of 
starvation rather than go to the public poor-house, 
because of their persistent belief that the British 
Government was enticing them in there in order to 
murder them and get them out of the way. But at 
Jaipur, how could his subjects suspect any plot of 
that character to be hatched against them by their 
own Raja? And, indeed, the good missionary doctor 
threatened with his whip the only native who ap- 
proached the carriage to beg, because he knew the 
man wanted the money to buy opium from a drug- 
shop near by. 

There is an amusing but authentic story con- 
nected with the custom of that same drugshop. A 
dog which had become infatuated with the drug 
used to station himself at the corner near by and 
stand on his hind legs to beg for the cash, on re- 
ceiving which he trotted oif to deposit it with the 
merchant and get its value in a bit of opium. 

In this native state the relations between the 
Government and the Christian missionaries are cor- 
dial; and what is more unusual, the relations of 
the missionaries also with the leaders of Hindu 



A Model Native Citif 89 

thought. Indeed, from the roof of the Museum 
there was pointed out the compound belonging to 
a protestant and reforming Hindu sect, which was 
at one time very radical and locally influential. 
Its founder was Dadu, a contemporary of Martin 
Luther. He is said to have left one hundred and 
fifty-two disciples, about fifty-two of whom nothing 
whatever is known. Either the founder or some of 
his immediate disciples — it is disputed which — left 
a poem of some 5,000 verses of four lines each, all 
most carefully rhymed, in which his teachings are 
given in detail. Dadu rejected the authority of 
the Brahmans, disbelieved in the efficacy of ritual 
and sacrifice, derided idols ; and was in other re- 
spects a most daring heretic and infidel from the 
point of view of Brahmanical orthodoxy. At about 
the same time, not only Europe but also India, and 
not through any means of direct communication 
but by virtue of the reactions which enforced re- 
ligious orthodoxy is always sure to bring about, was 
full of revolt against the dogmas of the prevailing 
religion and the domination of priestcraft. The 
heretical poem of Dadu is one of the few, but most 
interesting, of the survivals of the literature which 
grew out of this and far earlier revolts in India 
against the orthodoxy of Brahmanism, outside of the 
writings of Buddhism and Jainism. 

After dining with Col. Jacobs, the Resident, and 
getting from him the more British, but still highly 



90 Intvmate Glimpses of Life in India 

favorable report of the situation, past and pres- 
ent, in Jaipur, we returned to our tent at 10 :30, and 
finding our traveling servant ensconsed on the mats 
in one of the flies, and a boy sent by the government 
to guard us, squatted on his heels before the front 
door, we went promptly to sleep, with a sense of 
security, and slept soundly until we were wakened 
for our early-morning start. This "sense of se- 
curity" had been maintained in spite of a startling 
story of the recent experience of one of the mission- 
ary ladies whose night-lodging had been prepared 
similar to our own. She was a new-comer to India 
and had hitherto been skeptical about snakes as a 
real danger under such circumstances. But one 
night, when she was kneehng in nightdress beside 
her bed, saying her prayers, she was aware of some- 
thing cold touching one of her naked feet. Her first 
impulse was to give it a kick, thinking it might be 
the puppy who was in the room. But she checked her- 
self in time to save her life, with the thought that 
if it were the puppy, she should hear the sniffing 
noise he would make. The "thing" crawled slowly 
up her bare leg until it met the obstacle of her thigh, 
then turned and slowly crawled down again. The 
frightened girl then threw herself on her bed, fainted 
quite away, passed from the fainting fit into a deep 
sleep, and did not come to consciousness until in the 
bright light of morning, when she was awakened by 
the noise of her servant killing the cobra in her bath- 
tub in the fly of the tent. 



A Model Native City 91 

We had no molestation from any of this kind of 
terror. But my extraordinary and quite unneces- 
sary precautions against robbers came near ending 
disastrously. For my address-book, with the letter 
of credit and other valuables inside it, had been be- 
stowed within the case of the pillow under my head; 
and we had come off forgetting it. However, a 
telegram followed by a letter, brought it to us in 
due time, and not a thing was misplaced or missing. 
We were then quite sure that our experience of the 
benefits of a paternal government in native Northern 
India, when the native Raja is wise and well-dis- 
posed, and the British Resident is judicious and 
kindly, was not purchased at too high a price. 



CHAPTER V 

RELICS OF MOGUL MAGNIFICENCE 

¥7^ OR nearly two centuries there flourished in 
*• Northern India a succession of remarkably able 
rulers under the general title of the Mogul Empire. 
("Mogul" is the Arabic and Persian form of the 
word Mongol; but its use is customarily restricted 
to the Muhammadan rule in India, as it was founded 
by the invader, Baber, who unlike his equally war- 
like ancestor, Timur, made up his mind, after hav- 
ing conquered the territory, to settle in the plains 
of Hindustan and found for himself a new empire 
by the help of his followers.) This period of its 
flourishing began under the rule of Akbar, justly 
called "the Great," who was the contemporary of 
Queen Elizabeth of England. The man Akbar was 
not only a great warrior and continued his con- 
quests throughout his lifetime until they extended 
pretty well throughout all India, but he was also a 
great statesman and civil administrator. In his 
latter capacity as a ruler, he so arranged the reve- 
nues from the land that, with no greater burdens 
laid upon the people and taking into account the 

92 



Relics of Mogul Magnificence 93 

greater purchasing power of the money of that 
day, they rivalled those got today from the corre- 
sponding area by the British. So much of a re- 
ligious liberal was this Muhammadan emperor that 
he put Mussulmans and Hindus on the same basis; 
is said to have had a wife who was a Christian ; and 
actually undertook to promulgate a new state-re- 
ligion which should incorporate the more obvious 
truths of so-called natural theology, and include 
the truths and practices of all the best religious 
creeds. Akbar proclaimed himself the prophet and 
head of this new state-church. Every morning this 
monarch worshiped the sun before the public, as 
being the representative of the divine soul which 
fills the universe; but he allowed himself to be wor- 
shipped as divine by the ignorant multitude. 

The reigns of Akbar's son, Jehangir, and of Je- 
hangir's son. Shah Jahan, and of his grandson, 
Aurangzeb^ — the three reigns extending from 1605 
to 1707 — cover the period of the greatest magnifi- 
cence and culminating power of the Mogul Empire, 
and also the period of the beginning of its decay. 
Each of these sons rebelled against his father ; and 
after the last of them, Aurangzeb, "none of his suc- 
cessors to the throne was anything higher than a 
debauchee or a puppet." But how few of all the 
hereditary dynasties, established by force anywhere 
in the world during the whole length of its entire 
history, have remained illustrious and firmly seated 



94 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

during a longer time. And not one of them any- 
where has left such glorious remains in one re- 
spect at least. The reference is, of course, to the 
glorious remains of the architecture of the Mogul 
Empire which was achieved by native and foreign 
labor, under native and foreign influences, during the 
reigns of these four of its princes. It was chiefly to 
rejoice our eyes with the sight of this architecture, 
rather than to give lectures on philosophical or re- 
ligious topics, that we visited Delhi and Agra. 

Our host in Delhi was the missionary physician, 
Dr. Crudgington, who had spent some years and 
made important explorations up the Congo, in West 
Africa. After breakfast we at once started on our 
round of sight-seeing and went first to The "Fort" 
which at the time of the Great Rebellion was the 
stronghold of the city of Delhi. Within its walls 
had gathered an immense fanatical population with 
a garrison of not less than 40,000 soldiers, armed 
and disciplined by the government against which 
they had rebelled, with 114 pieces of heavy artil- 
lery mounted on the walls, a large magazine of shot, 
shell, and ammunition, and 60 pieces of field artil- 
lery, all of British manufacture, and manned by 
artillery men drilled and taught by British officers. 
In those days it was no such easy task as it would 
now be to reduce speedily such a fortified position. 
The British hesitated at first about bombarding 
Delhi, both on account of the difficulty of the job and 



Relics of Mogul Magnificence 95 

also from the fear of the moral influence of failure 
or long delay ; and as well, from other scruples. The 
walls of the inner city in the vicinity of the Fort 
are built of small but exceedingly hard brick, and 
the masonry is so good that they still form a solid 
rocky rampart of fifteen feet thick. 

We were shown over the Fort by a "red-coat" 
who was fairly intelligent and otherwise a good 
guide. From the walls we looked down upon the 
Jamma Musjid, which is reputed to be the largest, 
as it certainly is the most frequented, mosque in 
all India ; and, indeed, for that matter, in the whole 
world. After the rebellion the British cleared a 
broad highway straight from the front of the Fort 
to one of the sides of the Mosque, in order that, in 
case of another rebellion, they might command it 
with the guns, without the risk of injuring the in- 
tervening parts of the city or killing its innocent 
population. 

The Mosque at Delhi is certainly well worth t]ie 
sparing for its own sake and without regard to the 
disturbance which its destruction would have occa- 
sioned throughout the Mussulman world. The pur- 
ity of the architectural effect is, indeed, somewhat 
diminished by a rather undiscriminating mixture 
of red sandstone and white marble. But on the 
whole its exterior is most imposing. It has three 
gateways ; and it rises, a combination of huge fron- 
tispiece, and domes, and four angle towers, and two 



96 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

minarets, upon a lofty basement, the whole giving 
an effect of great variety, elegance, and size. The 
gateways are surmounted with galleries, on the roof 
of which are fifteen smaller marble domes, with 
spires tipped with gold. Above these are fluted 
minarets, six in number, which have open arched 
chambers at the top and are surmounted with gilt 
pinnacles. Each of the three great gateways is 
approached by a flight of steps of unrivalled gran- 
deur. Under the Mogul Empire only the Emperor 
himself could enter by the main gateway ; and now, 
only the Viceroy can enter by this way. It is said 
that five thousand workmen were employed for six 
years in its construction. At the Northeast cor- 
ner is a pavilion in which are said to be placed au- 
thentic relics of the Great Prophet himself. Jamma 
Musjid is the pride, not only of all India, but of 
the Mussulman world; and if it had perished under 
what were at the time considered the necessities of 
war, it is likely that its destruction would have left 
a sore hard to heal between the conquerors and the 
conquered. 

Our principal interest in the Fort was not to 
hear the story of the part it played in the Great 
Rebellion, but to see the exquisite gems of Oriental 
"culture" that still remain "scattered" here and there 
among the "bare and ugly British Barracks." Of 
these gems the two most famous are the Diwan-i-Am 
or Hall of Public Audience and the Diwan-i-Khas or 



Relics of Mogul Magnificence 97 

Hall of Private Audience. The size of the former 
of these magnificent structures is, indeed, only one 
hundred feet by sixty, but it was formerly all plas- 
tered with chunam and overlaid with gold. It was 
in a recess at the back of this Hall that the cele- 
brated Peacock Throne, so mysteriously lost, used 
once to stand. The "Peacock Throne" was "so 
called from its having the figures of two peacocks 
standing behind it, their tails being expanded and 
the whole so inlaid with sapphires, rubies, emeralds, 
pearls and other precious stones of appropriate col- 
ors as to represent life." The French jeweller, 
Tavemier, who saw the throne when on a visit to 
Delhi in 1665, describes its marvels as follows : "It 
was of the shape of a bed, 6 ft. by 4 ft., supported 
by four golden feet, 20 to 25 inches high, from the 
bars above which rose twelve columns to support the 
canopy. The bars were decorated with crosses of 
rubies and emeralds, and also with diamonds and 
pearls. In all there were 108 large rubies on the 
throne, and 116 emeralds, but many of the lat- 
ter had flaws. (In this later remark we detect the 
shrewd eyes of the trained expert.) The twelve col- 
umns supporting the canopy were decorated with 
rows of splendid pearls." Tavernier estimated these 
to be the most valuable part of the throne, the total 
value of which was estimated at £6,000,000. But 
alas ! since it was carried off by the Persian invader, 
although it was for more than a hundred years ru- 



98 Intimate Glimpses of Life vn India 

mored to be still hoarded in the Treasure House of 
the Shah, it has now perished from sight, though 
not vanished in oblivion. But if it had not been the 
Persians who stole it under the title of booty, it 
would have been some one else; for this way of 
acquiring valuables is well enough known both to 
not very ancient culture, and to still more modern 
Kultwr, 

The best preserved portions of the Diwan-i-Am 
foreshow the style of decoration which characterized 
all the most splendid architecture of the Mogul Em- 
pire. These are chiefly its engrailed arches, and the 
elegance of its chunam work inlaid with precious 
stones or overlaid with gold. But it is in the interior 
of the smaller building, the Diwan-i-Khas, that "the 
art of the Moguls reached the perfection of its jewel- 
like decoration." On a platform rises a pavilion, 
both of purest white marble, the roof of which is a 
flat cone and which is supported on a double row 
of marble pillars. The inner face of the arches, 
and the spandrils and pilasters which support them, 
are covered with a richness of flowers and foliage 
of the most exquisite designs and delicacy in execu- 
tion, crusted in green serpentine, blue lapis lazuli, 
and red and blue porphyry. In Persian characters, 
repeated twice in the panels over the narrow arches 
at the ends of the middle apartment, beginning from 
the East on the north side and from the West at 
the south side, and all in richest decoration, runs 



Relics of Mogul Magnificence 99 

the famous inscription : "If a paradise be on the face 
of the earth, it is this, it is this, it is this." But 
the builder of this palace was forced to learn, like 
all the remainder of earth's millions : There is not, 
and there never has been, any such paradise on the 
face of the earth. But perhaps there is no nearer 
approach to the symbolical and apocalyptic repre- 
sentation of a sensuous paradise than that which 
must have been afforded by the architectural achieve- 
ments and royal magnificence in living of the Mogul 
Empire when it was at its prime. 

My record of Friday, December 22, 1899, runs 
as follows : "A great day, for it has taken us over 
ground occupied by various successive dynasties, 
conflicting religions, and contending races, — a task 
in sight-seeing which, according to Keene's Hand- 
book for Visitors, ought to occupy one for not less 
than two days." But our most interesting and dis- 
tinctive experience was not in the way of visiting 
ruined palaces, tombs, and mosques, and — guide- 
book in hand — laboriously digging out details of 
history and description, but in the form of what 
might have been a very serious encounter with a 
crowd of rascally natives. 

We had already climbed up to the top of the first 
story of the Kutb Minar and had admired the scenery 
from this elevation, but had refused, on the ground 
that it was not worth while, to climb the nearly one 
hundred feet still above our heads. The origin of 



100 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

the Kutb is unknown and it is debated whether it was 
built by Hindus or their Muhammadan conquerors. 
At any rate it is a "grand monument" to something 
or to somebody, and fully bears out its pretensions 
to be a "tower of victory," "the most perfect tower 
in the world," one of "the seven architectural won- 
ders of India." It rises in a succession of five stories, 
each one of which is marked out by corbelled bal- 
conies and decorated with bands of inscription, to a 
height of more than 240 feet. The first three stories 
are fluted and built of red sandstone, but the upper 
two stories are faced chiefly with white marble. The 
shaking which it got by an earthquake in 1803 
threw down the cupola and disarranged the battle- 
ments and balconies, besides giving somewhat of the 
appearance of a lilt to the whole structure. But 
it remains one of the pieces of building best worthy 
of an admiring visit in all that part of India. 

Near the Kutb Minar are the ruins of a magnifi- 
cent mosque, which stands on the platform of an old 
Hindu temple, and the courtyard of which is sur- 
rounded by a mixture of Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu 
pillars placed one upon another. The original or- 
namentation of many of these columns has had its 
heathenish beauty defaced by the religious fanati- 
cism of the Muhammadan conquerors, who took 
pains to knock oif the heads of the gods carved 
upon them, and otherwise attempted the removal of 
all temptations to idol-worship. An Arabic inscrip- 



Relics of Mogvl Magnificence 101 

tion over the eastern entrance to the courtyard states 
that the materials were obtained from the demoli- 
tion of twenty-seven idolatrous temples. Inside the 
courtyard of the ruined mosque is a relic of ancient 
manufacture and art, which may fitly tame the 
boastfulness of the Krupp works at Essen and the 
furnaces of the U. S. Steel Corporation at Pitts- 
burgh and elsewhere. It is the "Iron Pillar," cele- 
brated for its size and its beauty. This pillar is a 
solid shaft of wrought iron, more than sixteen inches 
in diameter and twenty-three feet eight inches in 
length. An analysis of a bit of this pillar showed 
that it is pure malleable iron of 7.66 specific grav- 
ity. Its own history is in brief deeply cut in the 
form of a Sanskrit inscription on its western face. 
It records the fame of a Raja of the olden time, 
who wished to perpetuate a form of bragging from 
which his successors in sovereignty, both in the East 
and in the West, have not recovered up to the pres- 
ent time. "He subdued people . . . and obtained 
with his own arm an undivided sovereignty on the 
earth for a long period." He, too, was pious, how- 
ever, and wished to acknowledge that the gods had 
something to do with the effectiveness of the energy 
of "his own arm"; for Raja Dhava was a worship- 
per of Vishnu, and the pillar was probably sur- 
mounted by a figure of that deity. The date of 
the pillar's erection is put in the third or fourth 
century A. D. How the workmen managed to han- 



lOS Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

die such a mass of iron is perhaps no harder to im- 
agine than how they handled the stones of nearly 
seventy feet in length and thirteen or more in height 
which lie at the foundations of the unfinished temple 
at Baalbek. 

When we descended from the Tower we were be- 
sieged by an invitation to visit the "Jumping Well" 
and see the quasi-vaudeville performance which, 
for a small fee, would be given there. At first we 
were reluctant, for there was much more than 
enough, set down in the guidebook as important, to 
make an extremely full and tiresome day. But here 
was something to see which was not ordinarily pro- 
vided, and which, as the adventure — though it might 
have resulted quite differently — actually turned out, 
quite compensated for both money and physical ef- 
fort. It afforded us a rather unique experience of 
native craft and cowardice. 

The "Jumping Well" was distant a full half-mile 
away, and since the sand was deep, the sun was 
hot, and there was no trace of any path, the walk 
was not an altogether pleasant one. But our guide, 
who as the event clearly showed, had something 
more than a merely friendly interest in enticing us 
thither, kept momently repeating the reassuring as- 
sertion that we were now already there. When we 
did reach the place, the well itself proved worthy of a 
special visit for a traveler who had never before 
seen, in its better Oriental form, such a source of 



Relics of Mogul Magnificence 103 

perennial joy and safety. The well itself was, I 
should judge, eight or ten feet in diameter (there 
were no exact measurements accessible), and was 
said to be 120 feet in depth. It looked — but prob- 
ably was not really — as much; and it was lined to 
the bottom with most excellent solid masonry. On 
one of its sides was sunk a square pit, of perhaps 
fifteen or more feet across, also with walls of good 
stone-work, to about half the depth of the well ; and 
from this pit, to the bottom of which descended a 
substantial stone staircase, iron doors opened at in- 
tervals into the well. This was all designed so that 
the water could be stored as it rose to various 
heights ; and so that, as it sank to lower depths, the 
lower doors might be opened in succession, from 
which the women might let down buckets into the 
waters below. 

On our arrival we found a curious and ill-looking 
crowd of native men and boys already gathered, 
doubtless to see how the foreign sahib would stand 
being fleeced, and to what extent. We were at once 
escorted to a little raised mound of earth from 
which we could look over the high curb of masonry 
and see to the bottom of the well. In one of the 
doors below, but probably about forty or fifty feet 
from the surface of the water, stood a naked man. 
"Look, he will jump," said the master of the jump- 
ers, speaking with the authority and pride of an 
Arabian "master of the horse." We looked, and 



104? Intimate Glvmpses of Life in India 

he did jump, plump into the water below; and then 
we turned away. "Look again, and still another 
will jump," said the manager of the show. Some- 
what tardily, yet in time to see that a man did 
jump, we looked again; and then we turned away 
in very decided and final manner and with the air of 
one sated with the daring or mystery of a spectacle 
provided at so small a fee. To the urgent exhorta- 
tion to look and see yet others take the "daring" ad- 
venture — you cannot call it by any word which 
smacks of tragedy, for the jumps were made feet 
foremost; and yet let us say as much — ^we refused 
to be witnesses: instead of looking over the curb 
down the well, we stood erect with our resolve and 
looked the swindling manager of the show right in 
the eye. But we did hear two splashes in the water, 
as though some one may have jumped. (We were 
afterward told that sometimes, when they are not 
carefully watched, they expedite matters by throw- 
ing large stones instead of themselves down the well.) 
However all this may have been, in an incredibly 
short time four men, dripping with water and hastily 
slipping their breechcloths on, stood before us ; and 
for all four the manager began to demand the cus- 
tomary backshish of a half-rupee each. "But I 
saw only two of them jump, and I will pay for only 
two." At this a wordy argument began, which be- 
came more cool but decided on the one part, and on 
the other more excited and even threatening. Final- 




WALLS OF GOOD STONE WORK 



Relics of Mogul Magnificence 105 

ly, this part of the contest ended with a seemingly 
final settlement: "Well, then, if you will not give 
two rupees, give one rupee." A single rupee was 
then handed to the man who most looked like the one 
we had first seen jump; and he was instructed to 
divide it with the other man, whom we could not rec- 
ognize but who had actually been the second one 
to have the honor of displaying such fortitude and 
skill before our eyes. 

The implied declaration that this was to be an 
amicable settlement of the controversy did not cor- 
respond to the sequent truth of fact. For at once, 
the demands for another rupee became more insolent 
and threatening; and a larger and more ugly crowd 
was all the while gathering. Our guide had antici- 
pated the situation and had, as a matter of caution 
for his own hide, or in view of his responsibility to 
the government for the safety and freedom from in- 
sult of his foreign guests, already taken to flight. 
Not even in the distance was he anywhere to be seen. 
It was certainly time for matters to be taken firmly 
into our own hands. The woman was therefore 
placed in front, and at some distance behind came 
the man who, as a part of his marriage vows, had 
promised *to protect," with an angry crowd of na- 
tives close by his side or at his heels. Finally, it 
seemed necessary to take some more decided meas- 
ures to solve the problem of escaping actual assault. 
This may be expected from the natives, only when 



106 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

they are in much superior numbers, and you are 
alone and unarmed somewhere on the sands or in 
the jungles of India. I therefore adopted the fol- 
lowing strategy (I use the personal pronoun in re- 
counting this rather Quixotic adventure, for I be- 
lieve it is the only time I have assumed the positively 
warlike attitude since I was — then a boy — drilling 
for the Union army). I quickly furled my umbrella, 
converted it into a club, turned and advanced upon 
the enemy, brandishing my weapon, looking inde- 
scribably fierce, and snarling like a tiger. The ef- 
fect was instantaneous and highly satisfactory. The 
whole pack slunk away and let us go unmolested. 
This trivial incident is told with some detail be- 
cause it is so distinctive of the temper of the low- 
lived native crowd in India, and of the way in which 
it is necessary and possible to control them. For 
we were really in some danger ; and if certain condi- 
tions had been allowed to develop, there would have 
been no little danger in the situation just described. 
Indeed, not long afterward, there was published an 
account of a lady and gentleman among the foreign 
visitors, who at this same "Jumping Well," and 
doubtless by this same crowd, had been thrown upon 
the ground, badly beaten, and robbed of considerable 
money. The same characteristics may be illustrated 
on a larger scale by what happened in Bombay not 
long before our visit to that city. A score of 
English policemen, with no demonstration of violence 



Relics of Mogul Magnificence 107 

on their part, and without making any arrests, kept 
at bay thousands of riotous natives, highly excited 
at the efforts of the Government to suppress the 
plague, in the streets of Byculla. But if a scuffle 
had taken place, and one of those policemen had 
been set upon by the mob and forced to the ground, 
he would speedily have been trampled to death or 
torn in pieces. Such a mixture of cowardice and 
cruelty are multitudes of the lower classes in India. 
On the other hand, the great body of the agricultural 
classes — and the great body of the people belonging 
to all classes — are of a gentle and kindly temper ; 
and some of the tribes, especially of Northern India, 
are as brave and sturdy and faithful warriors as can 
be found anywhere. 

Among the things we saw that day as we returned 
to the city of Delhi by another route, these two 
were the most notable : the Tomb of Safdar Jang 
and the Tomb of Humayun. In the cemetery not far 
from the former is the burial place of the Poet 
Khusrau, which, although he died in 1315, is still 
kept continually crowned with flowers. It was to 
the latter tomb that Bahadur Shah fled and there 
concealed himself after the British had stormed 
Delhi in 1857; and outside of it he and his sons, 
when they had been forced to surrender, were taken 
and shot. 

Our stay at Delhi was made both interesting and 
instructive by our intercourse with the missionaries, 



108 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

— those whom we met being for the most part of the 
English Baptist Mission. Our host, Dr. Crudging- 
ton, was one of those who, under the auspices of 
this Mission, had made the first ascent of the Congo 
from the West Coast as far as Stanley Pool. He 
had many thrilling narratives to tell of his experi- 
ences with natives and wild animals. Among them 
one of the most amusing was an encounter with an 
African chief who, under pretence of hospitality, 
was trying to detain the party indefinitely that he 
might have a favorable opportunity for murdering 
them and getting possession of their guns and blan- 
kets. But the Doctor having ordered all to be ready 
on a certain early morning, held out his hand in 
farewell to his murderous host, and looking him 
straight in the eye, tightened his grip upon the black 
man^s hand until the fellow went down on his knees 
before him, howling with pain, — thus unconsciously 
illustrating the psycho-physical truth that, in gen- 
eral, the white races have a stronger "grip," phys- 
ical and mental, than the black. 

To illustrate the benefits of a large mixture of the 
"paternal" element in dealing with the natives of 
India, we learned of the same conditions of economic 
and social injustice prevailing here which we had 
noticed elsewhere. In the last great famine, that of 
1897, thousands of bushels of grain were being stored 
in the granaries of the native dealers for export to 
foreign countries, while England and America were 



Relics of Mogul Magnificence 109 

sending gifts of food to save the starving in the same 
region. But it is not in India alone, it is perhaps 
pre-eminently in our own country, that the ethics 
of distribution, and not the limit of production, is 
the greater economic problem. 

On our way from Delhi to Agra we had one of sev- 
eral experiences with the extremely unsatisfactory 
management of the state-railways of India. The 
first-class car was scarcely fit for a freight car; and 
although the distance was only 139 miles, it took 
the entire time from 9 A. M. to 5 :30 P. M. to cover 
it. The chief reason for this is that everything is 
subject to the needs, and even the caprices, of the 
officials, civil and military, rather than to any fair 
extent, to the needs and the comforts of the traveling 
public. 

Of all the places in India, and perhaps in the 
whole world, for seeing sights of wholly-or-half-de- 
parted magnificence in things made by human hands, 
Agra is the chief. For this reason, and because our 
visit to Agra had little significance or result other 
than the seeing of these sights, we may be pardoned 
for telling what we saw in somewhat more of the 
guide-book style. 

Immediately after our first breakfast, our host. 
Dr. Valentine, drove us in his cart to Sikandra, — 
Miss Valentine accompanying us on her wheel. The 
road is that over which the Moguls used to go to 
Lahore or Kashmir, — the so-called "Appian Way" 



110 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

of Agra to Lahore. On the road we passed one of 
the cos-minar, or cone-shaped stone pillars, like 
those the Romans used to set up, which were em- 
ployed by the Mogul ruler, Jehangir, to mark the 
path over the plains when as yet no highway had 
been constructed ; and where relays of horses used 
to be stationed for the better despatch of messages 
requiring haste. At Sikandra (or Sikandarah) is 
the tomb of Akbar the Great, which in its present 
condition was constructed by Jehangir, his son, in 
1613 A. D. The gateway leading into the garden 
which surrounds the Tomb is of red sandstone, in- 
laid with white marble, and with a splendid scroll, a 
foot broad, adorning it. Many of the stones which 
pave the way from the gate to the Tomb are in- 
scribed with the names of the donors ; others have 
cabalistic signs upon them, especially a form of X 
which was supposed to be effective in guarding 
against the evil eye. 

The architecture of the tomb itself is very pe- 
culiar. It is a pyramidal building of four stories ; 
three of them are of red sandstone, and the fourth, 
where Akbar 's cenotaph rests, is of white marble. A 
massive cloister, broken by high central arches, runs 
around the lower story. The vaulted ceiling of the 
vestibule, now faded, was originally elaborately fres- 
coed in gold and blue. A gentle incline leads to the 
chamber where the great monarch rests. Narrow 
staircases lead to the fourth and highest platform 



Relics of Mogul Magnificence 111 

which is surrounded by a cloister of white marble, 
carved on the outside into lattice-work, every square 
of which has a different pattern. In the center of 
the platform is the white cenotaph of Akbar, just 
over where his body was laid away in the dark vaulted 
chamber below. On the north side of the ceno- 
taph is inscribed the motto of the sect he founded: 
"Allaliu Akbar," "God is greatest ;" and on the 
south side : "Jalla Jalalahu," "May His glory shine." 
On the top of a white marble pillar, which stands at 
the head of the sarcophagus, was — so the story runs 
— set in gold the celebrated diamond, Koh-i-Nur. 

In the afternoon of the same day we visited the 
Fort and the palaces of Akbar and Jehangir, but 
such splendors of architecture have been for our 
purposes sufficiently described in connection with the 
visit at Delhi. The same thing is not, however, true 
of the Moti Musjid or Pearl Mosque." This struc- 
ture Fergusson describes as "one of the purest and 
most elegant buildings of its class anywhere to be 
found." The "purest and most elegant," which we 
saw in India, I am quite ready to say. The exterior 
of this mosque is faced with red sandstone, but the 
interior is covered over with marble, some white, 
some blue, and some gray-veined. The mosque prop- 
er, as it stands within its wonderfully beautiful 
courtyard, has three aisles of seven bays opening on 
the courtyard, and is surmounted by three domes. 
There is a front row of supporting pillars, on the 



112 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

eastern entablature of which an inscription runs the 
whole length in letters of black marble inlaid into the 
white. The inscription says that this mosque may 
be likened to a precious pearl ; for no other mosque 
is lined throughout with marble like this. 

If, however, we may compare a tomb with a 
mosque, the mausoleum erected to the memory of 
the Persian adventurer, whose daughter married 
Shah Jehan's son, and who became high treasurer of 
Jehangir, is for its carved work in marble still more 
wonderful. The tomb of I'timadu-Daulah is exter- 
nally all, and internally in part, encased in white 
marble, and beautifully inlaid with pietra dura work. 
On each side of this square building there are window 
recesses filled with exquisite lattice-work in marble; 
in each of the comers there rises an octagonal tower. 
The side-chambers of the mausoleum are panelled 
with slabs of inlaid marble; but the upper part of 
the walls and the ceiling are lined with plaster which 
is ornamented with paintings of flowers and long- 
necked vases. In the thickness of the outer walls 
are two flights of stairs, which ascend to the second 
story. Here the pattern of the floor is the most 
suggestive of bold free-hand drawing in inlaid work 
of anything which we had seen. 

But the afternoon of this day was reserved for 
the first of our two visits to that building, the work 
of the aff^ection for a woman which has been so al- 
most universally acclaimed as the "most beautiful 



Relics of Mogul Magnificence 113 

building in all the world." This is the supreme ex- 
pression of the praise of the Monguls as builders, 
that "they designed like Titans and finished like 
jewellers." The glory of Agra, "the most splendidly 
poetic building in the world," is the Taj Mahal. But 
although the Taj has been perhaps more frequently 
copied and more abundantly described than any 
other building in the world, it needs perhaps more 
than any other building to be seen to be appreciated. 
And this is for three reasons : Like every great and 
beautiful piece of architecture, it depends for its 
beauty on its surroundings ; its only fitting sur- 
roundings are the Oriental atmosphere as it prevails 
in Northern India; and its beauty is so largely dec- 
orative, although it has also the beauty of form and 
proportion. Let us then at once agree with the 
writer who says : "It can only be described as a 
dream in marble." And let us repeat with a qualified 
approval the words of Lord Roberts: "Neither 
words nor pencil could give to the most imaginative 
reader the slightest idea of the all-satisfying beauty 
and purity of this glorious conception. To those 
who have not already seen it, I would say, 'Go to 
India. The Taj alone is well worth the journey^ " — 
all of which is fine enthusiasm for the beautiful in a 
hardened (?) warrior. 

We shall not try either to describe in detail the 
Taj Mahal, or to narrate any of our dreams before 
or inside of it ; but we shall only state a fact or two 



114 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

about it, of the more obvious sort, and then refer 
the reader to the illustration or to his memory- 
picture of the reality. In front of the garden in 
which, seemingly far away, stands the Taj is a gate- 
way of red sandstone inlaid with white marble and 
surmounted by twenty-six white marble cupolas. 
Pass the gateway, and you find yourself in a lovely 
garden, beds of which are filled with the choicest 
shrubs and with cypress trees of great size and 
beauty. Through the center of the garden and for 
its entire length runs a channel of water, which has 
no fewer than twenty-three fountains distributed 
along its course. In front of this channel and at the 
back of the garden rises a platform, faced with 
white marble, 313 feet square and 18 feet high, with 
a white minaret at each corner, 133 feet high. In 
the center of this platform stands the mausoleum it- 
self. The size of the building is a square of 186 
feet, with the corners cut off to the extent of 33^2 
feet. The principal dome is 58 feet in diameter and 
80 feet in height. The dome, which is built of brick, 
is, however, faced with white marble, so that the en- 
tire building appears composed of this material, 
including the smaller domes which are placed at each 
of the four corners. 

But, as has already been said, besides the stand- 
ards of beauty of form and material, the Mogul ar- 
chitecture must be especially signalized for its ex- 
quisite decoration. It is less conspicuously true that 



Relics of Mogul Magnificence 115 

it was designed by Titans than that it was finished 
as jewellers finish the most beloved of their works. 
All the spandrils of the Taj, all the angles and more 
important details, are inlaid with precious stones. 
While lacking the simplicity and freedom of Greek 
decorative art, it has therefore the lavish luxurious- 
ness which is so acceptable to the Oriental taste. 

But it is on entering the central chamber, be- 
neath which the bodies of Shah Jehan and Mumtaz-i- 
Mahal, the best beloved wife, who after bearing him 
seven children died in child-bed of the eighth, are 
resting in a vault ; and after taking time to gaze 
upward and around in thoughtful and appropriate 
mood, — that the chastened appreciation of the 
beauty of the mausoleum reaches its most calm and 
finished form. Here, under the center of the central 
dome, enclosed by a trellis-work screen of white 
marble, "a chef d'ceuvre of elegance in Indian art," 
and seen in the softly illuminated gloom of the dis- 
tant and half-closed openings which surround them, 
are the "show tombs" of those whose bodies lie be- 
neath the floor. And he who looks must agree with 
him who has written : "No words can express the 
chastened beauty of that central chamber." 

By agreement of all who have been able to enjoy 
the experience, a single visit to the Taj is not 
enough ; and the second visit should, if possible, be 
taken by moonlight. We could not control the 
moon, but we were fortunate enough to be able to 



116 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

control our own movements. We therefore went 
again, this time by ourselves, my wife and I; and 
escaping the escort of the insistent guides, we took 
our fill of the architectural beauties of the interior 
of the Taj Mahal. And to the delights of the eye 
we added the delights of the ear, which were all the 
more delightful, because unexpected. For when she 
sang up into that marble dome, so far away above 
our heads, there came back such an echo as I have 
never heard and never expect to hear again. There 
was no woodenness or metallic harshness in that echo. 
Only to imagine the purest white marble singing 
"up aloft'* and far away, like a heavenly but inar- 
ticulate choir. 

It is almost shameful to add any criticism of the 
architectural perfection of the Taj Mahal, even 
when seen in the most sympathetic spirit and from 
the most favorable points of view. But one may 
agree with Fergusson in complaining of a certain 
stiffness of outline. And to this I venture, timidly, 
to add that two details are rather offensive to me. 
These are: First, that the small projecting pinnacles 
which continue the small minarets have a somewhat 
weak and finical look; and, second, that the con- 
trast between the common and rather vulgar inlaid 
work on the lower part of the exterior and the much 
more delicate work at the higher levels, is too abrupt. 
We do not wonder, however, that when Shah Jehan 
lay dying in his palace across the river, he asked 



Relics of Mogul Magnificence 117 

to be carried to the tower-room, so that his last 
gaze might bridge the Jumna and linger on the Taj 
Mahal, the tomb of his beloved. 

Another of our interesting excursions during our 
stay in Agra was of a totally different character; 
but it is worth recording. It was to the Government 
Jail. Here carpets, which have become somewhat 
celebrated both in England and in the United States, 
were being woven. Of the 2,000 prisoners detained 
here, more than 700 were employed in weaving rugs 
and blankets, and about 500 in extra-mural work. 
The system of guards was very interesting. Only 
three English officers were in charge ; but all the 
guards were natives, — among them a good many 
Burmese; and all except those who were acting as 
turnkeys, were convicts. Their reward for faithful 
work is seven days off on each month's term of im- 
prisonment. One immense carpet was being woven 
for Queen Victoria as a present from a former 
teacher in the jail who had become a great "swell" 
and one of her Majesty's pets. He had taught the 
Queen-Empress a little Persian, and had been most 
liberally rewarded, to the disgust — it was freely re- 
ported — of the then Prince of Wales and of all the 
officers in the British-India service. I recalled with 
approval the plan of employing prisoners in work 
that may encourage aesthetical talent, and give the 
mind such uplifting activity and comfort as the 
exercise of any art may bring; for I had seen the 



118 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

thing better organized and more effective for good 
in some of the prisons of Japan. The untoward 
truth was that fully two-thirds of these prisoners 
are discharged only to come back again; whereas, 
under the helpful influence of a few benevolent and 
Christian workers, more than eighty per cent of the 
convicts discharged from some of the Japanese pris- 
ons are permanently reformed. This difference may 
have been partly due to the fact that here in India 
there was no prison school, except for the boys, and 
no religious services of any kind, — the latter omis- 
sion being made almost imperative by the dreadful 
curse of caste. 

On our long journey from Agra to Calcutta we 
had our usual "mixed" experience with the manage- 
ment of the railways in India. We arrived at Tund- 
la Junction a Httle late, but not long after one 
o'clock A. M. No attention had been paid to our 
telegram asking for a reservation ; and since the plat- 
form was crowded with intending passengers for the 
Punjab mail, the chances for sitting up all night 
seemed altogether too favorable. When the through 
train arrived at 3 :30 P.M. I discovered that the lady 
who was the sole occupant of the exclusively re- 
served "Damen-coupee^* was getting out; and into 
this we posted, in spite of official regulations ; but on 
promising not to "give away" the station-master, 
and to vacate myself at Cawnpore, should any lady 
passenger appear to claim it, we were both allowed 



Relics of Mogul Magnificence 119 

to remain. Since there was meanwhile no more le- 
gitimate applicant, I stayed on till Allahabad, where 
we had a late breakfast. But on coming out with a 
cup of coffee for the lady companion, who had pre- 
ferred to stay by the luggage and secure her seat 
in the car, the trouble began again; for a meddle- 
some female employee of the R. R. Company had 
instigated the station-master to do his solemn duty, 
and had placed him under fear of being disciplined 
by threatening to inform against him. When, how- 
ever, the lady flatly refused to be left alone, and her 
escort as flatly refused to leave her, unless she had 
the protection of some lady companion, or unless 
the first-class compartment for which he had paid in 
Bombay were provided for them both together, that 
was at once done which could easily have been done 
without any controversy. A compartment, much 
better than the one we had occupied thus far, was 
found, and coolies ordered with all haste to transfer 
our luggage. The total expense of all this righteous 
treatment was not large, much less than it would 
have been in Europe, where, too, such things are 
extremely likely to happen (sic). 

All day long we were passing through a compara- 
tively uninteresting country, but with the gratifying 
sight of increasing improvement as respected the 
traces of the ravages of famine and plague. Indeed, 
from Mogul Serai eastward, miles of plain, as far 
away as the eye could reach in any direction, and 



120 Intimate Glimpses of Life vn India 

level as any of our prairies, were green with "tender 
croppes ;" and although it was mid-winter, the rich 
foliage of beautiful trees greeted the eye, — made to 
it more grateful because it had become so wearied 
and almost tearful with the sight of only stunted 
and withered bushes and white dust. 

On awaking the second morning we found our- 
selves going through a green and swampy country 
with a "jungle'* not far from either side of roadway, 
in character better to correspond to the conception 

1 had framed of an Indian jungle than did the so- 
called jungles in Western India. When we arrived 
in the station in Howrah, the terminal of the city 
of Calcutta, only about twenty minutes late, we 
found our host, Dr. Hector, still waiting for us; 
and we were forthwith conveyed to his residence, No. 

2 Cornwallis Square. 



CHAPTER VI 



GLORIOUS DARJEELING 



THE Ramayana, that sacred epic which has be- 
come the Old Testament of one of the Vishnu 
sects of the present day, declares of the mountains 
in Northern India: "As the dew is dried up by the 
morning sun, so are the sins of mankind dried up 
at the sight of Himalchal." In less chaste and pious 
language a modern traveler has written : "When 
God gave men tongues he never dreamed they would 
want to talk about the Himalyas ; there are conse- 
quently no words in the world to do it with." Sated 
as our minds were with the sight of the most mag- 
nificent works of human architectural skill, now lying 
in pathetic half-ruined and neglected condition, we 
were ready to turn with the greater eagerness and in 
a spirit of adoration to a vision of the vaster and 
more enduring works of God. Therefore, it was 
determined to spend the week intervening between 
our arrival in Calcutta and the beginning of the 
course of lectures there, in a visit to Darjeeling for 
a view of this most glorious of snow-covered moun- 
tain-ranges, or — as the English familiarly caU them 

121 



122 Intimate Glimpses of Life in Indior 

when seen from this point of view — "The Snows." 
Nor is the more familiar name inappropriate ; for 
the Sanskrit word, Himachal or Himalaya, signifies 
"snow- abode" or "snow-mountain." We set out 
with some anxiety, however, and with the prayer 
that heaven would at least for a few minutes roll up 
or blow away the thick enveloping screen of winter 
clouds ; for there have been those, and not a few, 
who have come thousands of miles and waited weeks 
for this sublime and purifying vision ; but have gone 
away at last without it. 

After a busy over-Sunday, filled quite full witl\ 
open-air and indoor services, we took the 3 :30 P. M. 
train and started on our fateful journey. As usual, 
the experiences on the railway were not calculated 
to conduce to one's comfort or to soothe one's tem- 
per. Our servant had gone in ample time to secure 
the accommodations to which we were entitled by 
our tickets ; but scarcely had we got seated when 
the compartment was invaded by a troup of "sojer 
boys" with loads of supplies and abundant courage 
with which to capture all the occupied but unforti- 
fied territory of the car. Of course, according to 
railway regulations, they had no right there. We 
capitulated, however, and gave up one side of the 
compartment with the understanding that we might 
retain possession of the other. There were other 
troubles by the way. At one of the junctions we 
were detained an hour by an accident which had 



Glorious Darjeeling 123 

happened in the morning to two of the "goods- 
trains;" further on, for another hour by a "hot- 
box ;" so that we arrived at the Ferry of the Ganges 
tired, hungry, and cross. 

But the memory of these petty annoyances quickly 
faded quite away as we crossed the sacred river, just 
as the sun was slowly setting, on the evening of that 
New Year's day. The peaceful stream, on whose 
banks and in whose flood so many millions of human 
beings have worshipped, bathing and praying, and 
to which they have sacrificed themselves and their 
offspring, to us who felt nothing of its summons to 
fearful deeds and degrading superstitions, was only 
a solace and a charm. The excellent dinner which 
was served during the more than an hour of cross- 
ing, of ham and capon and plum pudding, over 
which brandy was poured and then burned so that 
it might fling its own heat into the open air rather 
than have it confined to the injury of animal or- 
ganism, lent to the scenery its ameliorating influ- 
ences. 

Arrived at the other bank of the great river, we 
took the Northern Bengal Railway, which is only a 
meter gauge, and by the cheerful connivance of a 
friendly "guard" secured a compartment for our- 
selves. Before we lay down without undressing on 
the not very clean but very hard beds, we had a 
chance to notice that this part of Bengal seemed 
well-favored agriculturally and that the inhabitants 



124 Intimate Glimpses of Life m India 

had an appearance of greater vigor than prevailed 
among the inhabitants further South. 

After a night spent at Sihguri, we rose early, 
followed the instructions to put on extra-warm cloth- 
ing, and for the sake of obtaining better views chose 
an open car, in which to make the ascent of the 
foothills of the Himalayas. The Himalayan Rail- 
way is only a two-foot gauge ; its cars are raised 
only a step above the ground, so that they may 
"sit tight," as the saying is ; each car holds only 
eight persons, two in a seat facing each other, in 
each of the compartments into which the car is di- 
vided, but only part of the way to its roof. The 
railway runs beside the highway, which had previ- 
ously been constructed at enormous cost (in spite of 
the cheapness of native labor, the expense is said to 
have reached £6,000 per mile), perpetually crossing 
and recrossing it, and with it zigzagging up the 
mountain's side. In the great disaster of the land- 
slide at Darjeeling, in the September previous to our 
visit, the upper part of this railway had been quite 
completely wrecked. And as we were soon to dis- 
cover, it had not yet been completely repaired. 

For some miles the Himalayan Railway runs 
straight away over a well-watered and fertile plain 
and on a grade so nearly level that one need not 
suspect mountains to be within a hundred miles. 
When the real ascent begins, however, the scenery 
becomes more varied and picturesque. It is mid- 



Glorious Darjeelmg 125 

winter; it is the most northeastern part of India; 
and we are going to see the enormously deep and ex- 
tended snowfield of "The Snows." But 2,500 feet 
above the sea level, the cocoanut palms are growing; 
up to more than 4,500 feet, the bananas and the 
almond trees are in blossom, and lettuce and other 
green-stuff is being cultivated in the little gardens 
picked out among the stones on the mountain's side. 
The views down the ravines thousands of feet below 
would now be magnificent ; but alas ! at Kurseong, 
5,000 feet above the sea, we run into the clouds and 
do not come out again until we have reached Dar- 
jeeling. Of this station (Kurseong) in the moun- 
tains we are told that they who walk out in damp 
weather must beware of the leeches ; and that, al- 
though there are no tigers around, there are pan- 
thers which sometimes carry off the cattle. 

Thousands of natives — from Thibet and from 
Nepal, Lepchas, Bhoteas, Pahareas, and others — 
are at work repairing the road. Huge baskets of 
earth and great stones are carried upon the backs 
and heads of the women, many of whom are well ad- 
vanced in pregnancy; while the men are engaged in 
the work of dressing and laying the stone. In places 
the sustaining walls rise in terraces for more than a 
hundred feet from the valley below. 

At the terminal of the railway — at present not 
signaled by any station since the road-bed had not 
yet been made good quite so far as the Town of Dar- 



126 Intimate Glimpses of Life vn India 

jeeling — we were met by our host, and proceeded 
to sort ourselves out, so to say, in preparation for 
the chmb of a mile to his house. A round dozen of 
sturdy mountain maidens, with features like Esqui- 
maux or Alaskan Indians, fought with us and with 
one another for the luggage. After we had selected 
two, beaten off the others, and loaded the luggage 
on the backs of the successful applicants for this 
job of porterage, we mounted the lady into the 
"dandy," in which she was to be borne aloft on 
the backs of four men. Mr. Brown and I on foot 
led the cavalcade up the hill. At the Manse we 
were cordially greeted and led to our bedroom where 
a fire was smouldering. The bearers of the luggage 
followed us and were as sturdy in begging for back- 
shish, after they had received much more than their 
dues, as they had been in begging and fighting for the 
privilege of earning it. Nor until I had forcefully, 
though gently, turned them out and closed the door 
behind them, did they disappear, alternately growl- 
ing and chuckling. 

After tea and scones Mr. Brown and I set out for 
a stroll to the place where the slides occurred that 
had been a few months before so fatal to one of the 
missionary schools. The amazing thing seemed, that 
sane persons should continue to erect buildings in 
such hazardous places, in view of Darjeeling's past 
experience with landslides. But as not infrequently 
happens in such cases, the school having the most 



GlorioiLs Darjeelmg 127 

obviously perilous situation escaped without loss of 
life; while the schools that had appeared to be more 
safely situated were carried down the mountain's 
side and buried in stone and mud too deep for resur- 
rection. A visit was also paid to "Observatory Hill," 
where some fine views of cloud effects and of the vil- 
lage of Darjeeling were obtained; but nothing could 
be seen of the snow-mountains, the whole range of 
which was thickly shrouded in clouds. 

We went to bed that night with minds apprehen- 
sive of disappointment on the morrow; for although 
the stars were out, the prospect was not good for a 
clear sunrise. On waking early and hurrying to the 
window, through the lower sash one looked out into 
thick cloud. But one must look aloft if one wishes 
to see above the clouds the tops of mountains like 
Kinchinjanga ; and through the window's upper sash 
the giant's enormous white head and shoulders ap- 
peared, showing itself as well as it could in the grey 
twilight before the risen sun had driven the night's 
darkness quite away. It was necessary to forego 
morning tea and do part of one's dressing on the 
run, in order to reach Observatory Hill before the 
sun should overtop the horizon of the lower moun- 
tains in the East and light up the great Western 
range. But such limitations of appetite and leisure- 
ly toilet were amply rewarded. 

And now let us display a few physical facts in 
order to help the imagination re-create the picture 



128 Intimate Glimpses of Life m India 

of what we saw on that memorable morning of Janu- 
ary S, 1900. We were standing on a "Hill" more 
than seven thousand feet above sea level, facing 
Westward, with our backs to the now just rising sun. 
On the right the mountain's side fell away in a suc- 
cession of ravines for thousands of feet, so ab- 
ruptly that it required no great stretch of imagina- 
tion to picture ourselves as standing on the edge of 
one vast precipice and looking down into its depths 
a full mile below. On the left hand, on the slopes 
of the Hill and in the cup-shaped valley at its foot, 
nestled, picturesquely, the village of Darjeeling. In 
front of us, not far away, was an enormous gulf, 
the bottom of which appeared smoothly paved with 
the tops of the clouds colored as though under 
the moonlight ; and up through them broke the crests 
of mountains that were 15,000 ft. and 16,000 ft. 
high, and some of them higher still. But these were 
not "The Snows." The range entitled in a special 
way to be named Himachal, the "snowy," for more 
than a hundred miles in a line somewhat diagonal 
and at distances varying from about thirty miles 
to more than eighty miles, rose on our Western hori- 
zon to unparalleled heights, as though determined to 
support or rival Kin chin janga, their chief, in its 
enormous bulk and altitude of more than 28,000 
feet. And since it was January, and the snows had 
descended to their lower seasonable level, there 
greeted our wondering eyes a hundred miles of such 



Glorious Darjeeling 129 

lofty mountains with a "snow-abode," or "snow- 
field," having a depth by perpendicular measurement 
of from 5,000 to more than 15,000 feet. 

As we surmounted the crest of the "Hill," and 
stood panting with the exertion, that happened which 
we had come thousands of miles cherishing the hope 
to see happen ; the sun tipped its rim over the East- 
ern hills and covered all this vast "snow-abode" with 
color of rose. 

For twenty minutes more we watched the varied 
play of rising mists, snowy mountains recovering 
from their morning blush and turning a dazzling 
white, and changing cloud-effects ; and then a veil 
was drawn over the whole. We went back, by the 
same path but by no means so fast as we had come, 
to drink our morning cup of tea by a hospitable 
fire. Then once more the heavens smiled and threw 
off their veil of clouds. Since the mountain could 
be seen from the manse, but not nearly so grandly 
fine, another start was made for "Observatory Hill." 
This time the view was equally grand in its general 
features, but interrupted with intervals of over- 
spreading cloud, which had the effect of painting the 
views of the landscape below in terms of chiaro- 
scuro rather than in color of rose. A human element 
was now added to the interest of the scene. A priest 
was kneeling before a small shrine on the hill-top, 
burning incense, tinkling a bell unceasingly with his 
left hand, and with his right pouring out milk and 



130 Intimate Glimpses of Life m India 

offering rice, — all the meanwhile intoning verses of 
prayer. The onl}^ words which our native com- 
panion and traveling servant could understand were : 
"Great god, hear me; great god, hear me." But 
soon a solitary worsliipper, a woman, came to hang 
colored bits of cloth upon the poles and stunted trees 
around the shrine. As for the priest, he was ap- 
parently more concerned to attract our attention 
than the attention of his god, — in respect of which 
latter result the ceaselessly tinkling bell was expected 
to do all needed service. What the poor woman 
wanted — it might be any one of many things, for 
doubtless her life was full of unalleviated bitter wants 
— we had no means of conjecturing, since she did not 
once speak. Perhaps it was for a man-child to be 
born of her; or, perhaps, hers was a prayer for daily 
bread. For her the colored rags were to inform the 
god, whenever he graciously consented to inspect 
them. But if one is to worship the Great God, whose 
are the hills, what place on earth is fitter for the 
"lifting up of the eyes" to Him, than Observatory 
Hill, Darjeeling.? 

There has, indeed, been worship offered to the sun 
and to the mountains from this same spot for hun- 
dreds and perhaps for thousands of years. At pres- 
ent most of the worship here is Buddhistic, — Bud- 
dhism being the prevalent religion among the Tibe- 
tans. The Lepchas are, however, for the most part 
devil-worshippers. Among the whole of the native 



GlorioiLS Darjeelvng 131 

population in this region, bj whatever title they 
are called, or care to call themselves, substantially 
the same low, vague religious consciousness prevails, 
which is half superstitious fear, and half a blend of 
more indefinitely religious emotions. Clear con- 
sciousness, and especially definite theological views 
of any sort, are almost totally lacking among the 
natives in the mountainous regions of Northeastern 
India. 

Besides the views of the Himalayas there are al- 
most no things worth seeing in Darjeeling and its 
neighborhood. There is, however, one temple of a 
distinctly Tibetan type in the village of Bhutia 
Busti, about a mile from Darjeeling. In the after- 
noon of the day, therefore, I set out with my native 
companion to visit this temple and notice, if possible, 
any variations from the outfit and ceremonies of the 
low-class Buddhistic temples as I had seen them in 
many other places. There was some difficulty in 
finding the place, for the miserable dwellers in the 
huts of this wretched village seemed grudging in their 
directions to the right way, while all were clamoring 
vociferously for annas as a fee for acting as our 
guides. Finally, however, we reached the spot over 
a muddy and filth-bestrewn path, and were non- 
chalantly informed that we could not see the inside 
for less than eight annas. Several ugly-looking and 
dirty Lhamas were loafing about, and other of the 
lay brethren of the Bhutias were currying horses 



132 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

just outside the temple. As we came in front of the 
structure, one of the priests offered to set the prayer- 
wheels a-going for the regulation price. When I had 
him informed that I had seen much better temples 
for two annas, he no more seemed to appreciate my 
attempt at a jest than did the acolyte guide who, in 
the crypt of the Coptic Church in Cairo, was show- 
ing me where Joseph and Mary sat at the time of 
their flight into Egypt, when I asked him why hus- 
band and wife sat so far apart; but he was equally 
eager for the bacJcshish, and promptly reduced the 
fee to the two annas. In the lack of any intelligent 
guide who could speak English, and in view of the 
dangerously filthy look of the interior of the temple, 
and the fierce aspect of the men in whose escort we 
should be confined, we came away content with hav- 
ing looked through the window upon the gods and 
their shrines of Bhutia Busti. 

There is another point of view from which "The 
Snows" can be seen to great advantage, that was 
easily accessible from the Manse where we were 
staying. This is Jalapahar, the hill where is now 
situated the British cantonment for invalided sol- 
diers. The cantonment had been earlier built at 
great expense on Mount Sinchal, 8,400 feet above 
sea level; but after three years^ occupancy it was 
abandoned because so many of the officers and sol- 
diers committed suicide on account of overpowering 
loneliness. 



Glorioios Darjeeling 133 

On the second day of our stay, therefore, we rose 
early and, in spite of the prevailing thick clouds, 
climbed Jalapahar in the hope of seeing another 
sunrise on the Himalayas. There were beautiful but 
restricted views to be obtained by the way. But 
when we had reached the top and had followed the 
path through the grounds of the cantonment to the 
extreme edge of the clifF on which it stands, — clouds 
and mist having suddenly been swept away, — the 
effect was so unexpected and surprising that I burst 
into a shout and clapped my hands for joy. We 
were now standing 8,000 feet above sea level, and 
looking off on snowy mountains, the highest of which 
towered more than 20,000 feet above the point of 
view. A veil of mist covered them, as nearly as the 
inexpert e3^e could essay to measure such a thing, 
to the height of about 14,000 feet. The vale below 
us and the nearer and lower heights were seen with 
all that beauty of cloud effects, — fleeting lights and 
hurrying shadows, — of which only such mountains 
are capable ; while across the higher altitudes of the 
mountains themselves the fleecier clouds were draw- 
ing slowly in changing and fantastic shapes or lin- 
gering lovingly around them. We had speechless, 
because inexpressible enjoyment for a full half-hour 
of this sort; and we then came down to spend the 
rest of the day writing letters and shivering with the 
cold. 

The next morning was set for our starting back to 



134 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

Calcutta where the lecturing was to begin on the 
following Monday. But we were going to walk along 
the heights and sides of Jalapahar to the station at 
Ghoom, four miles from the Manse; and there was 
hope of getting other grand views of "The Snows" 
from several points on the way. This hope became 
courage when, just as we were about to rise, there 
was a rap on the bedroom door, and the voice of our 
host called out cheerily: "The Snows are visible 
and will be clearer soon." From the front of the 
Manse we saw the Himalayas once more rose-colored 
with the rising sun ; but within a brief half hour the 
clouds gathered around them again. This was as 
though they were jealous of their proud beauty, lest 
too long or too frequent display of it should render 
it common for mortal eyes. 

With two coolies carrying the luggage, and Mr. 
Brown walking with us and acting as guide, while 
his s^ce led the horse on which he expected to ride 
back, we set out for Ghoom. Various glimpses and 
fuller views of the mountains, all varying in particu- 
lars or in the type of their characteristic beauty, 
were allowed us by the way ; and after we had taken 
one last, fond lingering look at Himachal we came 
down to the iron bands of the railway, so suggestive 
of human achievements and human misdoings, if not 
with our sins dried up, as "the dew in the morning 
sun," at least with memories which will greaten and 
lift up the spirit until all memories forever fail. 



Glorioles Darjeeli/ng 136 

Besides the reward of so many of the grandest 
sights which nature can afford, we had picked up 
many facts about the natives and their relations to 
the Government, that shed some light, in however 
half-comical a way, upon the difficulties which beset 
the more familiar relations of the two. The children 
of these mountain regions swarm and seem much 
more hardy and better fed, in spite of any law of 
Malthus, than are the children in the plains below. 
But here, as everywhere, the curse of the peasants 
is the money-lender and the rice-merchant. It is not 
uncommon for the poor, when they have to borrow 
in order to get seed or to save themselves from star- 
vation, to be charged seventy-five per cent compound 
interest. I was told of one crofter, who in a time 
of drought had run in debt for IOI/2 rupees (about 
$4.50) worth of rice. Five years later he had paid 
on the loan 76 rupees, and still owed 140 rupees. 
Surely monts de piete under the jurisdiction of the 
Government would be a decided godsend to the poor 
in many parts of India. 

But some means would have to be devised to pro- 
tect the dependents themselves from becoming ulti- 
mately the chief sufferers from the help rendered to 
them too freely. For nowhere in the world is the 
general principle that injudicious and excessive help 
from others weakens or destroys the desire and the 
power of self-help, more flagrantly illustrated than 
among the natives of India, — especially, perhaps. 



136 Intvmate Glimpses of Life in India 

the natives of Bengal. Of all types of men rendered 
worthy of pity, but incapable of winning respect, 
there is, so far as my experience has gone, scarcely 
another so conspicuous as are a moiety of the Ben- 
galese babiis. Now the word "babu," it should be 
understood, is properly a polite form of addressing 
a Hindu gentleman, corresponding fairly well to our 
"Sir" or Mr. ; but it has come to be disparagingly 
used of a Bengal youth who, having received a part 
of a university education, or only having made a 
"try" at some of the examinations, affects the man- 
ners of an Englishman, expects to be regarded as 
a preferred candidate for some petty government po- 
sition, and thus to secure a larger dowry from the 
father of the girl whom he condescends to marry. 
But surely, we should get down from the mountains 
to the lower and more sordid things of life in India, 
before we pursue this subject further. 

On the journey down to Siliguri, although there 
was always much cloud, we had opportunity to mar- 
vel at the magnitude of the work done in the con- 
struction of the Darjeeling-Himalaya Railway, and 
tt) wonder at the grandeur and beauty of the scenery 
which is visible from its tracks. And when, toward 
sunset we came in sight of the plain of all North- 
eastern India lying some 2,000 feet below ; its green 
and greyish fields, and river courses, and pools, shin- 
ing like a mosaic of gold and silver, stretching away, 
and stretching upward, until they united with the 



Glorious Darjeeling 137 

sky in one limitless Turneresque picture, and all 
flooded and blended with the glory of the light of 
the setting sun ; we were content to return, refreshed 
and purified by intercourse with nature, to ordinary 
intercourse with mortal and sinful man. 

Arrived at Siliguri, we found that a letter from 
our kind and thoughtful host at Darjeeling had se- 
cured us a sleeping compartment. At sunrise we 
were crossing the Ganges, and after a really hot bath 
— the first in six days — and tiffin in Calcutta, estab- 
lished the habit of looking back on the trip to Dar- 
jeeling with an absolutely perfect satisfaction. 



CHAPTER VII 



THE CAPITAL CITY 



IN its situation and external aspects the City of 
Calcutta does not compare at all favorably, 
either for its beauty or its interesting sights, with 
the City of Bombay. Instead of being surrounded 
on three sides by the sea and backed by imposing 
hills, it lies straggling along a dirty river, at an 
elevation of only about twenty feet above tidewater. 
Like Bombay, it has a large commerce with which 
are concerned ships from all parts of the world ; but 
its port is too thin and ragged to be impressive. 

Moreover, the Hugli is a very difficult and danger- 
ous stream to navigate, not only on account of the 
cyclones, in some of which a storm-wave has over- 
whelmed thousands of people living along the banks, 
but also because its shoals are so constantly chang- 
ing that only a daily experience of the changes can 
enable the pilot to take his ship safely to its dock. 
The Hugli cannot be navigated at all at night, and 
in the daytime only when it is at flood tide. Nor 
are the buildings and public places of Calcutta as 
fine as those of Bombay. The same thing is true of 

138 



The Capital City 139 

its principal streets, whether used for business or 
for residence purposes. 

Perhaps a more important difference is due to the 
inferiority in enterprise and social development of 
the native inhabitants of Calcutta. There are al- 
most no Parsees here, — the race which we found 
to be so wealthy and influential in the rival city of 
Western India. Although there are now several hun- 
dred thousand Muhammadans resident in Calcutta, 
this class have never had such control of affairs here, 
where the comparatively modern enterprise of the 
English East India Company planted itself, as to 
leave any impress upon its architecture comparable 
to, or even resembling, that of Delhi and Agra. Of 
the Hindu natives the great majority are Bengalis; 
and of the Bengalis, by no means the uniformly best 
have gathered into its capital city. 

At the time of our visit Calcutta was the capital 
city, not only of the Bengal Presidency but also 
of the entire British Government in India. Since 
then, in 1905, the Province has been divided, in spite 
of much dissatisfaction and display of rebellious 
spirit on the part of its people. The reason as- 
signed for the partition was its unwieldy character. 
However valid, or invalid, this reason may have 
been, the uncertain and turbulent nature of the Ben- 
galis, as they were even at that late day in this 
capital city, may be better understood if we empha- 
size the following picture of the populations con- 



140 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

trolled from the beginning under the British Gov- 
ernment of the Province of Bengal. "The people," 
we are informed, "exhibit every stage of progress, 
and every t^^pe of human enlightenment and super- 
stition, from the educated classes to primitive hill- 
tribes. On the same bench of a Calcutta college sit 
youths trained up in the strictest theism; others in- 
doctrinated in the mysteries of the Hindu trinity 
and pantheon ; with representatives of every link in 
the chain of superstition — from the harmless offer- 
ing of flowers before the family god to the cruel rites 
of Kali, whose altars in the most civilized districts 
of Bengal, as lately as the famine of 1866, were 
stained with human blood." 

There were two subjects, however, — and these in 
importance inferior to no others, — in which the 
weeks spent in Calcutta were superior to all oth- 
ers, with respect to the information they imparted 
and the insight which they tended to stimulate. 
These were the effects, including both benefits and 
deficiencies, of the British system of educating the 
natives of India ; and the successes and failures of 
the various efforts of the native leaders at social 
and religious reform. The thoroughness and detail 
of the investigation in these two directions which 
I was able to make were very much increased by the 
facts that there was then in Calcutta no prevalence 
of plague or famine to interfere with the smooth run- 
ning of the educational institutions; and that the 



The Capital City 141 

Brahmo-Somaj were holding their annual meetings 
and were therefore greatly in evidence ; that we were 
being entertained, in the most familiar and friendly 
way, in the families of two of the leading missionary 
colleges; that Mr. Kali Banurji, a thoroughly edu- 
cated lawyer, the most influential and universally 
respected and beloved of all the converts from Hin- 
duism, gave almost his entire time to being our guide 
and instructor ; and that the leaders of the Brahmo- 
Somaj, and the heads of the various educational and 
religious institutions, and even the Viceroy himself, 
showed us the very extremes of frankness and cour- 
tesy. 

Before we speak of these more important matters, 
however, a few words about the lectures — the audi- 
ences which attended them and the reception which 
they met — will not be without instruction bearing 
on what is to follow. They were given in the eve- 
ning, in a large hall, on the ^'Philosophy of Relig- 
ion," and under the auspices, more particularly, of 
the missionary colleges. These missionary colleges 
are "aided," however, by the Government, and are 
considered an integral part of the Calcutta Uni- 
versity. At the beginning of the first lecture the hall 
was crowded ; but several hundred of those present 
were boys who showed that their only motive for 
coming was curiosity, by getting up and leaving the 
room, one by one or in groups of half-a-dozen or 
more. However, the audience that stayed by until 



142 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

the introductions, lecture, and concluding remarks 
were over, numbered five hundred or more. It was 
necessary to learn and practice composure in the 
sight of such fickleness ; but this it was not particu- 
larly difficult to do as soon as it became apparent 
that the custom was prevalent among the Bengalis 
of the student classes, and meant no particular dis- 
respect to any particular speaker. The lesson was 
afterward of considerable use in addressing Korean 
audiences, who, in this as in some other regards, re- 
semble those of Bengal. Besides, the attraction to 
make an early exit was often increased by the fact 
that nearly opposite the hall where the lectures were 
given the meetings of the Brahmo-Somaj people were 
being held nightly; and that they had adopted the 
measures of the Salvation Army for drumming up 
an audience by heading the procession with a noisy 
band of instruments of brass and instruments of 
percussion. These are not favorable to placidity of 
philosophical discussion. However, the faithful part 
of the audience did not diminish, but they rather 
increased; there was always on the platform, as a 
sort of body-guard, some of the most distinguished 
of the educated Hindus and native and foreign Chris- 
tians ; and in the body of the house several hundred 
of attentive, if not highly intelligent, listeners. The 
fact of chief importance, however, was this: it was 
Religion which was being discussed; and with the 
majority of those present, religion was the subject 



The Capital City 143 

of chief intellectual and practical interest. When, 
toward the close of the course a special meeting was 
arranged for the purpose, the questions proposed 
were pertinent and well-expressed. They comprised 
such topics as "The Arguments for the Being of 
God," "The Eternity of God and His Relations to 
Space and Time," "The Reconciliation of the Divine 
Omnipotence with Man's Individuality," and other 
themes of a lofty speculative character, such as 
would scarcely be brought forward by college stu- 
dents in this country. 

After the last lecture of the course, a Dr. Sarkar, 
who was the only native then living that had re- 
ceived the degree of LL.D. from Calcutta University, 
and who had a great reputation as a writer on "sci- 
ence," and a Justice Banurji, who was much ad- 
mired as a high-caste orthodox Hindu, because he 
himself reported that, while his mother lived, he 
daily drank the water in which she washed her feet, 
both made congratulatory remarks. Then a printed 
testimonial was read and presented by a Philosophi- 
cal Club in the Assembly's College, and another by a 
representative of the Presidency College ; there was a 
"response" and an exchange of handshaking and 
farewells ; and this part of the work of the winter 
in India was at an end. 

It was, however, the information which was re- 
ceived rather than that which was given anent the in- 
terests of education and religion in Calcutta and 



144 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

among the Bengalis generally, that was most worthy 
of mention and of permanent account. Almost every 
waking hour of the weeks spent in the city, when I 
was not myself engaged in speaking, was occupied 
under the escort and guidance of Mr. Kali Banurji, 
in getting an intimate acquaintance with the educa- 
tional, social, and religious affairs of the natives of 
this capital of India. The impressions and infer- 
ences from impressions, instead of being strung in 
their exact order on the thread of time, will best be 
told by grouping them under several heads. 

The first in the series of visits to the great num- 
ber of educational institutions of various types which 
have been founded in Calcutta was to the Grovernment 
College. Here we were met by the Principal and 
some of the professors and shown over the buildings. 
In this college the only person doing any work of 
research, or seeming to be interested in such work, 
was the young native professor of physics (he has 
since lectured on his discoveries in England and in 
this country) who' was investigating the changes in 
the atomic structure of plant life caused by the 
agitation given them by the ether-waves. From here 
we drove to the City College, an institution founded 
in the interests of the Brahmo-Somaj. This four- 
storied building was extremely disorderly and dirty, 
and the attire of its indwellers, including the Princi- 
pal, inclined strongly toward the disreputable. But 
it swarmed with alert and eager students to the num- 



The Capital City 145 

ber of 1,200 in all. The Sanskrit College next en- 
listed deserved attention. This institution was 
founded for high-caste Hindus exclusively. In its 
appointments, teachers and pupils, it was much more 
respectable in appearance than was the City College ; 
but it is doubtful whether so much work of actual 
instruction and practical influence is being done 
there. Its collection of Sanskrit manuscripts is 
particularly large and valuable. As an unexampled 
honor and privilege, I was allowed to take into my 
unpurified hands two of the oldest ones, — written 
on palm-leaves, worm-eaten and fallen into decay, 
so that the merest touch of them was rather pre- 
carious. One of the two manuscripts was said to be 
700 years old ; the other had belonged to the king 
of Ceylon and dated back 800 years. 

During another morning, three other colleges 
were exhibited and explained to us. Of these the 
first was the college for women on Cornwallis 
Square. This institution was then under the prin- 
cipalship of a Hindu lady. Miss Gose, a convert to 
Christianity and an M.A. of Calcutta University. 
The girls in the college classes are from either Chris- 
tian or Brahmo-Somaj families, and many of them 
were pretty and intelligent young women. In con- 
trast with this, the pupils of the Hindu College for 
girls, where little or no English is taught, were not 
only considerably younger, — since before they can 
get much education they are taken out of school to 



146 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

be married, — ^but also seemed decidedly inferior in 
physiognomy and bearing. The Government sup- 
plements the fees of this college, having "taken over*' 
the institution, and the position of the Lady-Prin- 
cipal is well paid, since she has house and servants 
furnished, and a salary of three hundred rupees per 
month, with prospect of an increase up to seven hun- 
dred. Some thirty or forty girls are boarders and 
are lodged in two large dormitory rooms. They 
have native food; but, like Christians, eat on tables 
and sleep on beds. 

From these schools for girls we were driven to 
the Free Church College, where Dr. Hector met us 
and conducted us over the buildings, answering free- 
ly all our more pressing inquiries. It is impossible 
to enforce with the Bengalis of the student class, in 
general and as long as they remain Hindus, any such 
discipline as distinguishes even our "looser" exam- 
ples of the American college. As we passed through 
the rooms where the students lodged and were sup- 
posed to do their studying, many of them were ly- 
ing on their beds, either with a neglected book be- 
fore them or even fast asleep. 

The next round of visitation took in the three 
principal native private colleges. The first of these. 
Central College, was founded by a graduate of the 
Free Church College, Mr. K. R. Bose, who greeted 
both his visitors with great cordiality and show of 
respect, — he having learned his philosophy of Mr. 



The Capital City 147 

Banurji, The entire support of this college comes 
from the fees of the pupils ; but since the college is 
small, and the connected school of lower grades is 
relatively large, — as is the case of many of our 
Western institutions — the former draws its support 
in part from the surplus funds of the latter. From 
here we went to "Ripon College," which is so named 
because the school of lower grade developed into 
the college under the administration of Lord Ripon. 
This was, on the whole, the most remarkable educa- 
tional institution I had ever visited. It is domi- 
ciled in a large, and what was formerly a very ele- 
gant house, built around a court ; and in other low 
buildings occupying part of the compound back of 
the house. The corridors swarmed with students 
who had to be literally pushed out of the way in order 
that we might reach the den used as an office of ad- 
ministration, where the Principal was seated. He 
is said to be very popular and his pupils much de- 
voted to him. As we were conducted about and in- 
troduced to teachers and students in room after 
room, the crowd of the "unemployed" followed us, 
gazing with the same open-eyed curiosity, and dis- 
playing the same stupid slowness about getting out 
of the way, which both men and bullocks manifested 
on the streets of the city. The corridors and reci- 
tation rooms themselves were all incredibly dirty; 
and some of them were so dark, damp, and obviously 
unsanitary that they would not pass inspection as 



148 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

cells in the common jail of any well-ordered Ameri- 
can city. Including its Law-school, this institu- 
tion numbers more than 1,600 students. 

In the third and last place, we stopped at the 
Metropolitan CoUege, where accommodations were 
rather better, at least as they appeared on the sur- 
face, than at the other native private schools. 

The fees paid by the students at these so-called 
colleges range from two to five rupees (67 cents to 
$1.67) per month, the larger sum being charged 
by the missionary colleges. Of libraries and labora- 
tories there were at that time practically none worth 
mentioning in the educational institutions of Cal- 
cutta, with the exception of the chemical and phys- 
ical laboratories of the Government College. As 
specimens of the character and ambitions of a large 
multitude of those who come to attend these institu- 
tions, this selection, from a number recorded in my 
diary and in my memory may suffice. The son of the 
most distinguished of the native judges was study- 
ing for the B.A. degree in one of the missionary 
colleges affiliated with the Calcutta University. He 
had chosen Latin instead of Sanskrit for his second 
language, as much the easier and more convenient 
(sic) of the two. His so-called study of any for- 
eign language was confined to committing to mem- 
ory from a "crib" the translation of the passages 
assigned for the daily task. He complained to his 
father that his teacher was trying to compel him 
really to learn English, whereas all he wanted was 



The Capital City 149 

to pass the examinations. This, since language 
counts 60 per cent for a pass-examination, and 25 
per cent of correct answers is enough for a pass, 
is no serious task for the average boy to accomplish 
by mere dead-lift of memory without any substantial 
knowledge of the subject. But the rewards of the 
"pass" are in themselves substantial. For as be- 
tween Calcutta papas when negotiating marriages, 
there is a definite scale of values affixed to the Uni- 
versity degrees: e. g., a B.A. pass is worth R. 750; 
a B.A. honor, R 1,000 ; an M.A. counts for R. 1,500 ; 
and a B.L. has a value of R. 2,000-2,500. Even a 
B.A. failure to pass has a certain commercial value. 
But here, as elsewhere, the matrimonial market fluc- 
tuates in accordance with the law of supply and 
demand. 

What is the product, and what are the effects in 
society and in state and church, of such a system of 
education as applied to the Bengalis? There can be 
little doubt that in many respects it is higlily un- 
satisfactory. 

In a conversation with the Viceroy, then Lord 
Curzon, I raised this question, although in rather 
an indirect and covert fashion ; but it led to the 
complaint which was also voiced by Lady Curzon, 
that one of the most perplexing problems of Govern- 
ment was how to deal with the rapidly accumulating 
surplus of native habus. The conversation must 
have left some impression, for I received next day 
from the Viceroy's secretary — "written at his Ex- 



150 Intimate Glvmpses of Life vn India 

cellency's command" — a letter of introduction to Mr. 
Pedlar, then Director of Education. In this letter 
it was mentioned that I was particularly interested 
in a better technical education for the natives. On 
visiting Mr. Pedlar I found him needing no argu- 
ment to enforce the conviction that the current sys- 
tem of university education in India was unfitting 
most of the candidates for degrees, for the life 
they must lead after leaving the university. They 
"will not work," said he; "they will not put their 
brains into their hands or their hands to any work 
more distinctly manual than handling a pen or the 
papers in some government office." Mr. Pedlar de- 
clared that the educated government clerk would not 
even carry up-stairs from the street cars in front 
of the government offices a chronometer or other 
small package for which he had been sent. The edu- 
cated hahu believes himself to have a right to de- 
mand employment in some "gentlemanly" pursuit; 
and all his poor relations beheve that he is bound 
to share with them, so that they may work less or 
need not work at all, the fruits of these labors (?). 
(The day before, my wife had discovered our trav- 
eling native companion making the bed by the way 
of sitting in an arm-chair by the bedside and gently 
and leisurely patting the sheets.) 

The attitude of the same class of minds toward re- 
ligion in general, and toward Christianity in particu- 
lar, is illustrated in the following letter — one of a 
considerable collection — ^whYch was written by a Cal- 



The Capital City 151 

cutta babu to one of the missionaries situated some 
hundreds of miles from that city. I copy it as it was 
written. 

"Venerable Father, 

"A Sudra by birth I have suffered much from the 
Selfish principals of the Brahmins. This & a knowl- 
edge of the Sins of Idolatry have led my mind to the 
immediate resignation of Hinduism. 

"Then what religion to accept.'' I prefer Chris- 
tianity to all those that ever exist under the Sun. 

"But to tell the truth Father, the Sorrowful tears 
of my parents, to whom I am the only prop and who 
are greatly entangled by the Satan of debt, put an 
obstacle to my being a convert. I, a student, instead 
of helping them in their difficulties, Shamelessly ask 
help from them for the continuation of my Studies. 
In this way getting more and more indebted, they 
are to lose what they have and on which the Sup- 
port of our family Solely depends. 

"Then Kind Father, if you receive me as your 
own son, and give me the best education you can 
afford for the improvement of my deplorable condi- 
tion, I unscrupulously accept Christianity and de- 
vote my life to its Holiness. Hoping you will not 
do otherwise than return a favorable reply soon. 
"I remain 

Kind Father 
your unfortunate Son, 

Kailas Chander Sarkar." 



152 Intimate Glimpses of Life vn India 

Let it not be supposed, however, that this descrip- 
tion applies to all the educated natives among the 
Bengalis or throughout all India. There, in Cal- 
cutta, were several score of highly educated men 
who had not "unscrupulously" accepted Christian- 
ity, but who, remaining Brahmans, were taking a 
part worthy of educated men in the civil and social 
work and improvement of the community. There 
were more who, like Mr. Kali Banurji, had beer^ 
really "converted" in heart and life to the religion 
of Christ, and who were doing valiant and self-de- 
nying and effective service in its behalf; and still 
more, of the humbler sort who were living as best 
they knew how in the performance of unnoticed daily 
duties, "for his name's sake." And, then, there were 
the professed social and religious reformers — some 
wholly sincere and well enlightened, and some not so 
sincere and more ignorant or self -deluded — who were 
stirring up themselves and one another, and trying 
to stir up the community, in behalf of a large im- 
provement of social morals and religious beliefs and 
practices. Through their extraordinary courtesy 
toward me, and their implicit confidence in my friend- 
ly escort, very special opportunities were afforded 
for an acquaintance with the Brahmo-Somaj and 
similar or rival organizations. 

The visit to the home of the Brahmo-Somaj peo- 
ple, which occupied the forenoon of January 16, 
1900, is worthy of a somewhat detailed account. 



The Capital City 153 

We called first upon Protab Chunder Mazumdar, the 
successor — so far as any one could be said to have 
been at that time recognized as such — of Keshub 
Chunder Sen, and found him apparently expecting 
us, seated at his table in the room wliich he uses 
as a study. Mazumdar is a rather striking man, 
with iron-grey hair and pleasing features. There 
is, however, a marked sensuousness about his coun- 
tenance; and his critics accuses him, not without 
grounds, of too much high-flown rhetoric and am- 
biguity of language, with at least occasional acts 
of duplicity. He showed in our brief conversation a 
quite too exalted estimate of the contributions of 
Hinduism to the purest and highest form of re- 
ligion, and of the superiority in religious and philo- 
sophical thought of the Oriental mind. Mozumdar 
seemed very earnest in his invitation to attend his 
annual sermon which was to be preached in the Town 
Hall next Saturday afternoon on the subject, "The 
Contributions of the Orient to the West." He evi- 
dently wished me to appear upon the platform. 

We then walked the few steps necessary to bring 
us to "Lily Cottage," the home of the great reformer 
Keshub Chunder Sen, where we met his son, grand- 
son, and a number of the missionaries of the Brahmo- 
Somaj. Mr. Sen took us first to see the marble 
monuments in an enclosure which is protected from 
the birds by a wire cage, and where are the ashes 
of his father and his mother. Keshub Chunder Sen's 



154 Intvmate Glimpses of Life in India 

monument has the same inscription on all four sides, 
but repeated in Sanskrit, Persian, Bengali and Eng- 
lish. It is his own celebrated sentence about the 
flight of the little "bird I,"— the soul. 

Near by, but in a separate enclosure, are the mon- 
uments of young Mr. Sen's wife and infant son. 
After this, we visited the chapel where, facing the 
outside door of the entrance, is the somewhat raised 
platform on which as his pulpit Keshub Chunder Sen 
used to sit and preach. Since his death this seat 
of the teacher's authority has never been occupied; 
and the question whether it shall be left vacant or 
not, in perpetuo, has been the occasion of a split in 
the Brahmo-Somaj. Just "at his feet," in front and 
at the sides, sat the apostles or more devoted pupils 
and missionaries of his doctrine. Each of them 
had his special mat which he brought and took away 
with him. Two of the missionaries showed me theirs, 
— one a goatskin, the other a woolen rug which, he 
said, was the gift of "the master" himself. At the 
present time, since it was a festival occasion, all 
the space immediately surrounding the platform was 
decorated with flowers, — not at all, however, as we 
should decorate, but by laying the blossoms upon 
the floor in symbolical, geometrical and other pat- 
terns. The remoter parts of the room, which was in 
all perhaps 24 ft. square, were for the occupancy of 
the less distinguished members of the church. 

The instruments on which the musical part of the 



The Capital City 155 

Brahmo-Somaj^s religious service was performed 
were — at least so far as they were shown to me — a 
large drum shaped like an hour-glass, and several 
pairs of cymbals. In their processions, their music 
was animated and stirring (as I had occasion to 
know by the disturbance of my lectures), — "So and 
So," as my informant illustrated by beating the 
drum with his hands. But in their meetings by them- 
selves, where the elect came together for meditation 
and prayer, the music is low and soft. The bible 
of the Brahmo-Somaj was then shown to me. It 
contains selections from various religious books, in- 
cluding, of course, the Old and New Testaments. 
The principle of selection seems to have been what- 
ever struck the fancy of the person who made the 
selection. Keshub Chunder Sen used to discourse at 
considerable length in these meetings, although the 
meetings themselves were appointed especially for 
meditation and prayer. 

We were taken from the Chapel back into the 
house ; and first into the drawing-room, on the walls 
of which hung two portraits in oil of the departed 
master, and a photograph of Queen Victoria pre- 
sented to him with an autograph copy of her Maj- 
esty's book, "Leaves from My Journal." 

Almost immediately the screen in front of the 
adjoining bedroom was folded aside by young Mr. 
Sen, who had slipped off his shoes reverently before 
approaching any spot sacred to the memory of his 



156 Intimate Glimpses of Life vw India 

Father, and we were beckoned to see where **'he 
breathed his last." The bedroom was small, but 
furnished with two single beds set close side by side, 
in the one of which nearest the door Keshub Chunder 
Sen had died. A white sheet was spread over the 
bed and over a long bolster lying lengthwise in the 
middle, which gave the appearance of a dead body 
just about to be prepared for burial. The son 
explained that his father's room had been left just 
as it was when he died, "except so far as necessary 
for tidiness." A little piece of carpentry which he 
had made in his last illness was shown ; and also the 
family heirloom in the shape of a brass flagon with a 
long spout, out of which the sick man had drunk 
when he was too ill to raise himself in bed. 

On returning to the drawing-room I was intro- 
duced to Keshub Chunder Sen's mother, an aged 
lady of more than eighty, who through her grandson 
thanked me for the honor done her in calling, al- 
though she knew it was rather due to the excellence 
of her departed son. With the most perfect sim- 
plicity, sincerity and earnestness, the dear old lady 
assured me that now, and for many years in the 
past, her only consolation had been the religious 
faith to which her son had devoted his life. When I 
bade her good-bye, she graciously bestowed upon 
me her maternal blessing. 

As we went through the front yard to reach our 
garry, we were shown the tank which gave the 



The Capital City 157 

name of "Lily Cottage" to the house; in which 
Keshub Chunder Sen was himself baptized by one 
of the brethren ; and in which all the members admit- 
ted to this branch of the Brahmo-Somaj are now 
baptized, — in "name of the Father, the Son, and the 
Holy Ghost." Mr. Banurji said that, although the 
reformer was in the beginning of his career often- 
times bitter toward Christianity, he came finally not 
only to have a sincere reverence for Christ, but also 
to regard him as in a special and unique sense the 
revealer of the true religion and tlie son of God. 
The general moral and religious atmosphere of this 
branch of the Somaj, he thought to be very excel- 
lent. They employ in all some sixteen or eighteen 
missionaries, but there is little growth to their 
avowed membership. The latest available statistics 
gave the total numbers of the Somaj adherents in 
all India at somewhat more than six thousand. But, 
as one of the missionaries of the order asserted, they 
did not rely on or greatly value statistics, but wished 
to elevate the people by diffusing true ideas and a 
devout spirit. 

There was much in all I saw and learned of the 
Brahmo-Somaj which, in other centuries, would un- 
doubtedly have served as the beginning for the wor- 
ship of another deified man, — the initiation of a new 
god. But Mr. Banurji, who admitted that there had 
been at one time danger of deifying Keshub Chunder 
Sen, thought this danger to be now successfully 



15S Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

passed. It must he remembered, however, that in 
the case of all the branches of the Somaj movement, 
as among the Orientals generally, the attitude of 
heart and life toward the founders and leaders of 
religious sects, and toward the revered dead of the 
family, much more nearly resembles the worship fitly 
bestowed on the Divine Being than is the case with 
us Westerners. 

From Lily Cottage we were driven to the house 
of Mr. Bose, who was then the intellectual and social 
leader of the other branch of the Brahmo-Somaj. 
Mr. Bose, who was educated in England, is a very 
cultivated gentleman and successful barrister, and 
the favorite with the student classes. One sees in 
him at once the keenly intellectual and polished man 
of the world ; on the other hand the devout and rev- 
erent atmosphere of Lily Cottage is here wanting, 
or at least not so obvious. 

On the way home we stopped at the missionary 
house of the Brahmo-Somaj. It was a dark and 
dirty and rather dilapidated structure in an obscure 
lane. But the brethren were very cordial, and I sat 
and talked with them so long, and waited so in ac- 
quiescence to their demand that I should not depart 
until I had "sweetened my mouth" in their house, 
that I was very late to luncheon. 

More private interviews with individual visitors 
of the various branches of the reformed sects served 
to deepen and correct the impressions with which 
I had begun my travels in India. One morning a 



The Capital City 159 

missionary of the more orthodox branch of the Brah- 
mo-Somaj, who had more of a reputation among his 
brethren for his piety than for his learning or in- 
tellectual vigor, called to inquire about the possi- 
bility of his coming to the United States to study re- 
ligion further. This brother seemed to have no ob- 
jection to the views or the theological dogma of the 
"Philosophical" Christian Trinitarians. 

Another morning, just as we were sitting down to 
breakfast, two natives called and announced them- 
selves as emissaries of the Chaitanya Somaj. They 
talked so rapidly and in such broken and poor Eng- 
lish, and interrupted each other so frequently, that 
I had great difficulty in gathering what they really 
wished. By point-blank questioning, however, it was 
discovered that they wanted to arrange a meeting 
for me with the leader of the sect and editor of its 
paper, "Patrika." They left in my hands a circular 
advertising two volumes by Shishir Kumar Ghose, on 
"Lord Gauranga, or Salvation for All." In this cir- 
cular, Ghose's book, together with other worthless 
stuff from Madame Blavatsky and others of her 
ilk, was especially commended by "Professor Bu- 
chanan of America, the Discoverer of Psychometry." 
I had previously supposed that Fechner and Weber 
had something to do with this discovery. But the 
secrets of "soul-measurement" as known to those 
initiated in the Indian theosophy are not for plain 
and ordinary Western minds. 

In this connection it is pertinent to mention the 



160 Intvmate Glimpses of Life vn India 

opinion of Mr. Kali Banurji — than whom, as has 
already been indicated, no one could be more com- 
petent to judge — that on the whole the influence 
of the so-called "Parliament of Religions" held in 
this country had been bad in India. In one case, 
the leader of a vile sect which continues phallic 
worship and the lewdest practices connected with 
it, had returned to strut about and brag of his seat 
in the Parliament as on a par with those of repre- 
sentatives of the Brahmo-Somaj and of Christianity. 
Before setting out on our trip around the world 
we had received a very cordial introduction to Lady 
Curzon from her father, Mr. Leiter, of Chicago. 
This kindness procured us several invitations to Gov- 
ernment House, the most prized of which was an 
invitation to luncheon where we were the only guests 
besides the members of the family. When Lord and 
Lady Curzon appeared in the waiting-room, where 
we had been conversing with one of his aide-de-camps, 
the Viceroy immediately said: "Let us go out to 
luncheon," and himself led the way. Before reach- 
ing the table, however, he fell back to speak with 
Mrs. Ladd, who was then seated on his right; while 
Lady Curzon proceeded to her chair and invited me 
to a seat on her right. Her conversation with me, 
after a few general questions asked and answered, 
concerned the ever-increasing swarm of habus who 
get, or just fail in getting, a university degree; and 
who then find no mission in life beyond trying for 



The Capital City 161 

some government office. This conversation, which 
was continued with the Viceroy, in a small room par- 
titioned off from the verandah, over the after-dinner 
coffee, led to the result of which sufficient has already 
been said. 

Lord Curzon made upon me an excellent impres- 
sion as having a fine blend of accurate information, 
good sense, and principled kindness. It was also 
interesting to find that he had a pretty thorough 
acquaintance with, and a very good opinion of, the 
Japanese. The impression made by the American 
woman he had married had already won for her 
the admiration and affection of all classes in India. 

Some time later we were invited to a dinner at 
Government House, at which seventy guests were 
at table, and which was followed by a dance to which 
three times that number were invited. The lady who 
was assigned to my escort I discovered — but only 
the next day — to be INIrs. Cotes, the author of "A 
Social Adventure," "The Simple Adventures of a 
Mem Sahib," and other books, under the noTti de 
plume of Sarah Jeanette Duncan. But since all her 
conversation was with a young officer, who sat on 
her right, about the Boer war, this ignorance did not 
matter. On this occasion also the Viceroy and Lady 
Curzon appeared in the reception-room only after 
all the guests were assembled. But at length one 
of the aide-de-camps announced "Their Excellen- 
cies," when they at once entered and passed in front 



162 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

of the entire assembly "lined up," as the saying is, 
extending a hand to each without speaking, — ^Lady 
Curzon some three or four steps behind her hus- 
band. The gentlemen all bowed; the ladies court- 
sied. They then led the way to the dinner table, the 
Viceroy taking out the wife of the Governor of Ben- 
gal, and Lady Curzon escorted by Chief Justice Mac- 
lean. These details of etiquette are referred to, not 
for their intrinsic importance in the sight of the 
"plain American Citizen," but because they are real- 
ly of no small importance in the eif ect they have upon 
the attitude of the Oriental toward the individual or 
the nation that observes or neglects them. 

Two or three dinner-table incidents will throw 
some light on the customs and sentiments that have 
much to do with the control of British India. A 
member of the French Embassy had a violent nose 
bleed which he strove in vain to staunch before be- 
ing compelled to leave the table. When he was finally 
forced to withdraw, he left his bloodstained napkin 
lying in the chair. Not one of the Mussulman wait- 
ers in their long red robes would touch it, and the 
slightly disagreeable task was forced upon one of 
the English head-butlers. 

Toward the close of the dinner, as the Viceroy 
stood and said: "To the Queen Empress," all rose 
to their feet and drank to Her Majesty^s health by 
at least touching the glass to the lips. One very 
abstemious English lady on the opposite side of the 



The Capital City 163 

table, who had refused to take wine with any of 
the courses, became the object of no little amuse- 
ment to those who understood the language of the 
waiter, as he overcame her resistance to having the 
glass of port poured out for her, only by saying 
repeatedly in Hindustani and in tones of increasing 
anxiety: "The Queen will be drunk; the Queen will 
be drunk." 

At the ball which followed in the state apartment 
over the dining room, after dancing the quadrille 
dlionneur "Their Excellencies" took no further part; 
but withdrew to the room just over the throne-room, 
where they remained and had summoned to them 
such persons only as they wished to meet. At 11 :30 
they retired and thus left free such of their guests 
as desired to come away. 

Less "distinguished" but more enjoyable than the 
"function" just described were the receptions given 
to us at the houses of our hosts. Doctor and Mrs. 
Hector and Professor and Mrs. Tomory. At the 
latter gathering which came near the end of our stay 
in Calcutta, there were present representatives of 
all the classes who had been more or less actively 
interested in the lectures and various other addresses 
which I had given in the city; and thus there was 
a very desirable opportunity to attempt something 
like a fair estimate of the results obtained. It was 
especially comforting to note that Mr. Banurji and 
a Mr. Maden, who spoke of himself as "a poor cot- 



164 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

ten-spinner," although he had been introduced as 
the "Calcutta Mr. Tata," or merchant prince, 
seemed in agreement on this point. 

During the stay in Calcutta several extraordinary 
opportunities occurred to see in a more intimate 
way some of the more ridiculous and some of the 
more cruel and loathsome sides of orthodox Hindu- 
ism. In the former class may best be put the visit 
which Mrs. Ladd was permitted to make with us to 
a family of Pirati or "polluted" Brahmans. The 
tradition is that more than one hundred years ago 
one of the ancestors of this family — whether on com- 
pulsion or voluntarily, the tradition is divided — ate 
of, or at least smelled of, Muhammadan roast beef. 
Refusing to get absolution by doing the required 
costly penance, the entire family became and have 
since remained outcasted. It costs them a pretty 
penny to get sons-in-law and daughters-in-law; for 
any girl marrying into the family can never return 
to her home. She, too, becomes an outcast. But 
the family have become rich, since their large com- 
pound has now been made central by the growth 
of the city of Calcutta, and is surrounded by very 
profitable bazaars. They have also multiplied large- 
ly and have arrived at a size to form a sort of a caste 
of their own, and to hire Brahmans to join them and 
perform all the rites of Hinduism. The sons of the 
last Maharajah — for they seem to have a right to 
claim this title — ^became a Christian, and his father 



The Capital City 165 

disinherited him. The present head of the family 
is an old gentleman who was a nephew and who be- 
came the heir to the estate and the title by a will 
which was disputed but upheld by the native court in 
India. The case was appealed to a judicial commit-, 
tee of the Privy Council, who decided that upon 
the present incumbent's death the estate must revert 
to the lineal descendants. 

The house in which the outcast, Sir Maharajah 
Jotindra Mhun Tagore, lives is one of the most mag- 
nificent of the native houses in Calcutta. As usual 
with such houses, however, its surroundings were 
filthy and squalid. We were met near the entrance 
by two handsome and well-dressed young Hindus 
and shown up into a drawing-room which, for size 
and magnificence of some of its furnishings, was 
truly royal. But there was here the same mixture of 
meanness and magnificence which had characterized 
the surroundings. The Maharajah was at his break- 
fast; and while we were waiting for him, the young 
men entertained us by setting a-going a large Swiss 
music-box. When the old gentleman appeared, ar- 
rayed in an elegant Cashmire shawl for his morning 
dress, we found him very cordial, bright, and enter- 
taining. 

Did the most intelligent of the orthodox Hindus 
really approve of such ridiculous ways of distin- 
guishing truth from error and dividing up the 
family of God into innumerable castes and outcasts.? 



166 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

This was the question raised by our visit to the Ma- 
harajah Tagore. Our next call provided the ques- 
tion with a practical answer. For it was upon one 
of the most highly educated, liberal and kindly of 
the strictly orthodox Hindus. While my wife and 
her female attendant were visiting the zenana, the 
doctor talked with me of his practice, of the af- 
fliction he had recently met in the loss of his wife 
and a favorite son, and of his hope of a reunion with 
his loved ones in heaven, with all the sincerity of 
faith and devoutness of feeling which could possibly 
characterize a "good Christian." Yet when he 
learned from whose house we had come to his, he de- 
clared that nothing could induce him to allow a mem- 
ber of his family to cross a threshold so accursed. 
In what essential respects, however, do these atti- 
tudes of Hinduism differ from those prevalent in 
so-called Christian circles during the centuries of 
their history.'' 

Of the cynical side of some Hindus a very vivid 
impression was gained when we responded to' the for- 
mal invitation to visit in his office the editor of the 
Patrika and the author of the two-volumed work on 
"Lord Gauranga or Salvation for All." Mounting 
with some difficulty a dirty, dark and winding stair- 
case, we found in his diminutive den an emaciated 
man with a mixture of conceit, fanaticism, and craft 
in his bearing; and yet with a certain pathetic ear- 
nestness. Mr. Ghose began at once to complain of 



The Capital City 167 

the powerlessness of all religion, especially Chris- 
tianity, to accomplish anything in the way of a prac- 
tical and ethical communion of man with God. The 
philosophical views which he alone understood thor- 
oughly and had expounded in his two-volumed trea- 
tise would be found the only means effective in pro- 
ducing this highly desirable result. 

But it was a visit to the Kali Ghat which gave 
just a glimpse into some of the most cruel and re- 
pulsive and obscene ceremonies and practices possi- 
ble in the Hindu cult. Of the worsliip of this "fero- 
cious she-monster" a modern writer (Professor Hop- 
kins) has said: "Obscenity is the soul of this cult. 
Bestiality equalled only by the orgies of the Indie 
savages among the hill-tribes is the form of this 
religion. ... A description of the different rites 
would be to reduplicate an account of indecencies, of 
which the least vile is too esoteric to sketch faith- 
fully." 

This temple of the goddess Kali is seated on the 
old bank of the Ganges a few miles from the city of 
Calcutta; the place derives its sanctity from the 
legend that when the corpse of Shiva's wife was cut 
in pieces by order of the gods, one of her fingers fell 
on this spot. The approaches to this temple are 
Hned with bazaars, many of w^hich are filled with 
wares of different sorts connected with the worship 
of Kali. On alighting from the garry we were at 
once surrounded by a crowd of dirty beggars crying 



168 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

out for backshish. We gave ourselves into the hands 
of a young priest who was comparatively neatly 
dressed, but who had in an exaggerated degree all 
the irritating characteristics of the oily, conceited, 
and superficial Bengah. He proved a good conduc- 
tor, however, — but only so far as our physical lead- 
ership was concerned; for he showed that he really 
knew nothing when we came to ask as to the origin 
and essential nature of Kali worship. 

Just as we reached the place where the sacrifices 
were performed, a goat was being fastened into the 
arrangement for holding its head firm ; and in a trice 
with a single blow (it is bad luck not to have a single 
blow do this work neatly) it was beheaded and its 
headless body carried off kicking vigorously. The 
sights and smells were so disconcerting to the ladies 
of the party that they wished to draw back without 
giving further opportunity for investigation in the 
interests of comparative religion ; but they were per- 
suaded to keep on until we could be shown around 
the entire outside of the temple structures. Into the 
temple itself none but qualified Hindus may enter. 
We were shown the bathing-tank which is connected 
with the Ganges by a canal, in the filth-laden waters 
of which perhaps a score of people were engaged in 
bathing. The young priest assured us that these wa- 
ters were sacred and used only for sacred purposes. 
We could well believe it, for in India no other wa- 
ters are so disgustingly and dangerously filthy as 




THE FILTH-LADEN "WATERS 



The Capital City 169 

those used for purposes of religious purification. 
According to his story, worshippers came to this 
temple of Kali from all over India, bringing offerings 
to be sacrificed, of goats and sheep and buffalo. 

As we came away the beggars "pitched into" us 
again. One especially persistent fellow wished us to 
give to him, above all others, because he was a priest 
and a gentleman ; and an able-bodied, well-nourished 
boy ran beside our vehicle for nearly a mile, crying 
out, "Sahib, Sahib, backshish, backshish." 

The narrative of our experiences in Calcutta may 
fitly be brought to a close by a word or two regard- 
ing some of the more interesting and instructive of 
the excursions made from the city. Of these, one 
consisted of a sail down the river to the Botanical 
Gardens, where, that day, no fewer than four church- 
picnics were being held. We visited the celebrated 
huge Banyan tree, which was then 129 years old, 
and had a circumference of 51 ft. of trunk at 5^/2 
ft. from the ground ; and of its crown, a circumfer- 
ence of 930 ft. This tree had already 417 serial 
roots actually established in the ground beneath. The 
process of inducing new roots to grow just where 
their support is most needed is interesting. The 
tree is scarified and the new root is taken down to 
the ground inside of a bamboo support which has 
been filled with soil. 

The Jain temple of Calcutta, with its surround- 
ing gardens and their variegated pavements, with 



170 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

its tinsel and glass and inlaid work, was worth a brief 
visit. But we were fortunate in having previously 
visited the temple of the same sect in Ahmedabad 
under intelligent guidance ; for the fellow who showed 
us around and called himself by the absurd title, "a 
Jain-Hindu" (Jain, in order to hold his place and 
get his Rupee; and Hindu, in order to keep his 
caste and save himself from social inconvenience) 
was totally unqualified for his business. He did not 
even know what the word Tirthankar meant. The 
priests were Hindus, serving for what they could 
make out of it ; and the only person about the prem- 
ises who appeared to know anything whatever about 
Jainism was a young man not connected with the 
temple, who, with his older companion, turned out to 
be pilgrims from Bombay. 

On one of the Saturdays, with a congenial com- 
pany, we had a delightful sail up the river as far 
as opposite Barakpore. Just as we were setting out 
on the return journey, the government launch car- 
rying the servants, followed by one carrying the 
Viceroy, Lady Curzon, and a party of friends, met 
us on the way to his summer-house for an over-Sun- 
day. 

After having such pleasant times and making so 
many good friends in Calcutta, it is not strange 
that when late in January we parted from them on 
the platform of the station and knew we should have 
small chance of seeing them again, we felt a distinct 



The Capital City 171 

tug on the heart-strings. Although our car was 
uncommonly good in its appointments, there was lit- 
tle sleep for me that night, partly from the excite- 
ment of bidding farewell and partly from anxiety 
over news threatening the work in the homeland. 



CHAPTER VIII 



HOLY BENARES 



THE City of Benares, or Kasi (the "Bright" [ ?] ) 
as the Hindus commonly call it, has been the 
religious capital of India from far back of historic 
times. Indeed, authentic history of the past of this 
ancient and important center of Indian religious life 
is very deficient, although it is certain that it was 
flourishing six centuries before the Christian era; 
for it was then that Sakya Muni, the founder of Bud- 
dhism, came to establish his religion there. And 
Buddha died at the age of eighty about 480 B. C. 
Even the site of the ancient city is in some doubt, for 
it was several times changed ; and the present city 
is constantly slipping away into the treacherous 
but sacred river that runs at the foot of the high 
bank on which are situated many of the most gor- 
geous of its ancient temples and palaces. Under 
Moslem rule its religious institutions suffered terri- 
bly. It is recorded that one of the Mogul generals 
destroyed a thousand temples and built mosques in 
their places. But no political pressure or military 
violence has availed to destroy the religious pre- 

172 



Holy Benares 173 

eminence in the Hindu mind, of Holy Benares. We 
were then obhged to visit it on this account; and 
also because we had talking of an unusually interest- 
ing character — at least, to ourselves — to do in the 
religious capital of India. 

At the Benares Cantonment station we were met 
by our host and given a most cordial welcome. Im- 
mediately'^ after luncheon we got ready for a so-called 
conversazione in the garden, at which some twenty 
gentlemen, mostly professors in the Hindu and 
Queens Colleges, were present. The conversation 
was general ; but one of the Hindus took me aside to 
ask what I thought Christ meant when he said, "I 
and my Father are one." After I had explained my 
understanding of the words he remarked that the 
Vedanta philosophy had much earlier taught the 
same truth. When questioned, however, as to his 
conception of the nature of this human oneness with 
the Divine Being he showed what all Oriental specu- 
lation on such problems of theology and philosophy 
always shows, — a very marked difference from the 
western thought as to what can properly be meant 
by personality and by personal relations. 

A more marked and almost startling example of 
the difference to which reference was just made, was 
afforded the next morning by a lengthy conversation 
with the "ascetic Raja Bhinga, the man of whom Dr. 
Fairbairn published such a superlative estimate in 
the Contemporary Review on his return from his 



174 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

lecturing tour in India. Raja Bhinga lives in a bun- 
galow fully two miles distant from the London Mis- 
sion. And since our call was set for seven o'clock 
in the morning, early rising and a hurried chota 
hazri were the conditions of keeping the engagement. 
A servant on guard with an old-fashioned musket 
was stationed at the gateway. Sending in our cards 
we were immediately asked to enter and meet the 
owner in his small drawing-room. 

Raja Bhinga appeared to be about fifty years 
of age. He had a distinctly intellectual face which 
in conversation lighted up with a pleasant sm^e, — 
touched with occasional gleams of sarcasm and ten- 
der bitterness. The Raja is an ascetic and a believ- 
er in the higher Hinduism ; but his asceticism does 
not assume a repulsive physical form. His dress 
was plain but free from any peculiarities designed 
to attract to itself the attention either of the wearer 
or of others. 

The views of either Protestant or Romanist ortho- 
doxy could not differ more from those of Kuenen and 
Wellhausen regarding the Old Testament and the 
clergy than did those of Raja Bhinga regarding the 
Vedas and the Hindu priesthood from those which I 
had heard expressed several months before by the 
Shankara-charya of the Kapola Bania caste in 
Bombay. In respect of all the Vedic writings and the 
commentaries upon them, — Upanishads, Pur anas, 
etc., — the Raja declared himself a thorough skeptic 
and rationalist. Even the most ancient of the Vedas 



Holy Benares 175 

were, in his judgment, full of "admixtures" and con- 
tained only occasional truths together with much 
that was "rubbislr ' and erroneous. True and higher 
Hint'.uism rejects not only the infallibility of the 
Scriptures but also the claims of the Brahmans. 
These priests, though pretending to teach the people 
with authority and even claiming from them rever- 
ence and worship, are blind leaders of the blind. The 
interpretations of the pundits have no great value. 
The revival of the Yoga philosophy now current is 
not true Yoga philosophy, is gaining few adherents, 
and is of little or no valuable influence. The Theoso- 
phists are more numerous hereabouts ; but most of 
them do not know what they mean and can only cap- 
tivate silly women and boys (this was a decided rap 
at Madame Blavatsky and Mrs. Besant). The Hindu 
Central College of Benares has started out to give 
a religious education to the sons of the higher caste 
Hindus ; but the Brahmans will have their own way 
there, and the pundits will teach their own biased 
views ; and no real enlightenment will result. 

When questioned as to his own religious views 
Raja Bhinga spoke frankly and in delightfully clear 
and elegant English, He avowed his belief in the 
doctrine of Maya or "The Great Illusion" : even the 
teachings and scheme of the Vedas, and all the Brah- 
manical philosophy and liturgy, as well as the world 
of things, belongs to the sphere of illusion. All is 
Maya. 

The world is full of evil, so the ascetic Raja of 



176 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

Holy Benares went on to explain. Pain is the fun- 
damental, the universal, the ineradicable experience. 
It cannot be banished or overcome so long as one 
remnant of Maya remains. But there are two ways 
in which a true Hindu may conduct himself toward 
this pain of existence. He may withdraw as much 
as possible from the world and give himself up ta 
reflection; or he may for duty's sake endure the 
world while taking no pleasure in it, — may go about 
this city, while being a true citizen of another and 
heavenly city. The way of self-denial is the only 
Way of Salvation. It is the extinction of all desire, 
of all love of self, of all interest in self, which at 
last brings the true believer to Nirvana. 

But what is Nirvana? How shall we describe this 
supreme good which the righteous man attains, who 
follows the Path of Salvation? Is it the extinction 
of all consciousness? No, for then a man might at- 
tain it by getting very drunk or falling into a faint- 
ing fit. Is it then the extinction of self-conscious- 
ness ? Certainly, yes ; for the extinction of the very 
root of self-interest is the only way of salvation. 
Questioned as to how a "person" could be said to be 
saved, that was no longer a person, having lost 
the indispensable characteristic of personality, the 
Raja claimed that the English language did not af- 
ford the words necessary to make clear his concep- 
tion of Nirvana. And since I could not argue with 
him about subtle distinctions in philosophical San- 



Holy Benares 177 

skrit, we seemed to be at an empasse in our efforts 
to agree with each other. 

On our way homeward we stopped at the "monkey 
temple," in the garden of which a quite different kind 
of ascetic had practiced for many years, receiving 
visitors and gathering their autographs. The old 
swami, who acquired the title of the "holy man" of 
Benare^, was said to have been a simple-hearted, sin- 
cere, devout, but ignorant person ; but his succes- 
sor looked as though he had gone into the business 
of saintship for what it might be worth. The mar- 
ble effigy of the departed saint, near by the cagelike 
enclosure in which he is said to have been buried, 
represents him in the attitude in which he used to 
pose during his lifetime ; and here he is already wor- 
shipped as divine, so little time does it take to make 
a new god in India. 

It may be doubted whether a more desperate and 
concentrated plunge downward from the heights of 
religious contemplation and attempt at pure living 
to the most loathsome and obscene superstitions that 
deceive the minds and deprave the morals of man- 
kind under the name of religion, could anywhere be 
found than that which one takes who passes, not as 
an unthinking listener or sightseer, but as an intelli- 
gent and thoughtful observer, from the presence of 
Raja Bhinga to the so-called "Monkey Temple" of 
Benares. For what the Europeans call by this im- 
promptu title, because of the myriads of monkeys 



178 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

which infest the large trees nearby, is more properly 
called the "Durga Temple," as consecrated to the 
'goddess of that name. But Durga is the terrific 
form of Shiva's wife ; and Durga is the concentrated 
essence, so to say, of everything silly, obscene, and 
cruel, which a foul imagination can picture as be- 
longing to the Female (da's Weibliche), when en- 
dowed with power, unrestrained either by fear of 
superior physical force or by semblance of moral 
considerations. Durga is the Female Devil, raging 
with cruelty and lust, let loose. Her worship is a 
Bacchic orgy, with unlimited indulgence in "wine 
and women." Human sacrifices were formerly among 
its bloody rites. Today, under fear of Government, 
the lust for blood is "appeased by the hacking of 
their own bodies," and by cutting off* the heads of 
goats. Their sanguinary tribute to the terrible wife 
of Shiva may be seen sprinkled about this Durga 
Temple, in whose groves monkeys ceaselessly chatter 
and gambol. Other lusts are not appeased in so lim- 
ited a way. 

The following day was occupied in going about the 
holy city. We drove first to a point well up the 
Ganges and there hired one of those queer boats 
which ply up and down the river. Chairs were 
placed on the tarred roof of the dark little cabin; 
and the four oarsmen started to row us down the 
stream in front of the bathing- and burning-ghats, 
and the medley of temples and palaces which line the 
upper part of the eastern bank of the Ganges. Num- 



Holy Benares 179 

bers of citizens and pilgrims were in the different 
stages of the act of acquiring merit or doing pen- 
ance by bathing in its sacred waters. The ascetics 
who were not thus engaged were squatting in the 
openings of their cells or in the open air. Among 
the bathers were fat old men and fat old women, chil- 
dren of both sexes, youths and maidens. The males 
seemed quite indifferent to the various degrees of 
exposure which their morning exercise involved ; but 
some of the maidens and younger women showed con- 
scious glances from dark and handsome eyes, and 
made haste to gather their saris about their bodies 
or their breasts. And, indeed, "the eternal feminine" 
is essentially the same the world over. For had we 
not noticed on the streets of Bombay that when the 
driver of the garry wished a woman who persisted in 
walking in front of his horse, to get out of the way, 
he cried out, ''ghullau margary, Mhan-ta-ree** 
("Get back, old woman"), at which the veiled one, if 
she was really young, pulled the veil aside to dem- 
onstrate how inapplicable was the implied insult. 
Most of the bathers were shivering with the cold; 
for although pith hats are needed in this part of In- 
dia to protect one against the winter's sun, the 
nights and early mornings are cool enough to make 
bathing in the open air a veritable penance for the 
native's sensitive skin. A few were ostensibly pray- 
ing; fewer still showed signs of really being ab- 
sorbed in their devotions. 

The shrines and temples along the bank had an 



180 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

abundance of "offerings" in and around them, — 
mostly of flowers; but of them all not another dis- 
played so many gifts of floral sort, or so many pies 
(a copper coin of the value of about one-quarter of a 
cent) lying on the floor or being counted by the 
priests, as did the shrine devoted to the worship of 
the goddess of smallpox. A veritable species of devil- 
worship this. 

The upper burning-ghat had as yet no funeral 
pyre lighted and no corpse brought down to it after 
being made ready for cremation. But by the time 
we had reached the lower and more popular burning- 
ghat, the business of the day was well begun. One 
pyre had already been lighted and beside it stood a 
man feeding it with bundles of straw; for the wood 
seemed green and much in need of coaxing. In the 
water of the sacred river, near by the spot where 
the fire was smouldering, a dead body was floating, 
while it waited to be raised from its watery grave and 
committed to the arms of the friendly pyre, when 
that should have been sufiiciently strengthened for its 
office. The boat was halted a moment and brought 
nearer to the bank that we might the better witness 
these obsequies. And now two men bearing a rudely 
constructed bamboo litter with a corpse swathed in 
white cotton, came trotting down into the water and 
slid off their burden dexterously from its lowered 
frame. Then one of them tore away the cotton cov- 
erings from the face and poured and dashed with 



Holy Benares 181 

his hands some of the purifying Ganges' waters upon 
the exposed head of the corpse. When we were re- 
turning by the place on foot — for we got out of the 
boat just above the Railway bridge and took it again 
much farther up the river, — ^we saw one body being 
consumed on the now fiercely burning funeral pyre, 
and several others waiting for their turn. In pass- 
ing the ghat, one of the attendants was seen to seize 
upon one of the corpses "lying around," so to say, 
and was heard to cry out in the most matter-of-fact 
way : "Whose body is this ?" 

On the bank above the burning ghat, in the form 
of successive terraces of human beings, were crowds, 
some of whom were bargaining, some chattering gos- 
sip, some looking unconcernedly on. 

The impressions made by the buildings of Benares 
as they lie along the upper bank, and as seen from 
the river, are not nearly so much of magnificence 
and solemnity as the photographs indicate. A few 
of these buildings, especially of the private houses 
of the Rajas, are really imposing; or, the rather, 
they have been imposing, for most of them have fallen 
into a pitiable state of decay. The most truly im- 
pressive feature still remaining is often the high 
flight of broad stone steps which leads down from 
the foundation walls to the edge of the river. The 
clay bank on this side of the Ganges is being con- 
stantly and rapidly eaten away ; and indeed, it would 
seem to be only a question of time when all this part 



182 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

of Benares will be in ruins. In many parts of the 
bank the lower portions of the steps and of the 
foundation walls are already undermined and fallen. 
One building of much more than average magnifi- 
cence, before it was finished, began to slide down 
the bank toward and into the river. 

Our boat-ride finished, we wandered through some 
of the thickest parts of the city situated on the banks 
just over the Ganges. Anapurna, or "The Tem- 
ple of Plenty," "The Golden Temple" dedicated to 
BisheshmaVy the "poison god," or Shiva, the famous 
Gyan Kup or "Well of Knowledge," which is situated 
in the quadrangle between the mosque and the Tem- 
ple of Bisheshwar, as though to court the favor of 
Hindus and Moslems alike (for, surely, both and 
all men need to drink of the well of knowledge), and 
a half-score of other unassorted temples and ghats, 
were given a passing visit. Of all these, perhaps, 
Gyan Kup is most horribly and disgustingly fas- 
cinating. As to its attractions let us quote the un- 
emotional but not untruthful or impious description 
of Murray's Hand-Book. "The quadrangle itself 
is unpleasant, but in that respect falls short of the 
well, which is absolutely fetid, from the decaying 
flowers thrown into it, notwithstanding that it has 
a grating over it, overspread with a cloth; for in 
this cloth there are large gaps, and flowers are con- 
tinually falling through them. The votaries also 
throw down water; and as they are not at all par- 



Holy Benares 183 

ticular how they throw it, they make the pavement 
one vast puddle, and besprinkle their fellow worship- 
pers all over, so that the clothes of many of them 
are in a dripping state. . . . The platform is 
thronged by men and women, and the horrible din 
of gongs and voices deafens the visitor. Crowds of 
fresh pilgrims arrive incessantly ; and as numbers of 
cows are mixed up in the throng, and must be 
treated with great consideration, the jostling is 
something terrific." The guide-book very properly 
omits mentioning the contributions made to the 
attractions of this "Well of Knowledge" by the 
human and bovine animals who crowd its sacred 
precincts. 

But Gyan Kup is only all this part of India's 
chief holy city, concentrated within a few square 
yards. The streets of this section of Holy Be- 
nares, paved with flagging and not more than five or 
six feet wide, are winding lanes, dank and slippery 
and disgustingly filthy beyond the worst Western 
examples. They are crowded, not only with human 
beings, themselves filthy and half-naked, but with 
goats and cows and bullocks, which have equal 
rights of way with men and women ; noisy with the 
chaffer of trade and the gossip and wrangling of 
worshippers. More physically repulsive than the 
pest houses and the famine camps are the ghats and 
temples of the city which is the center of the popular 
worship of native India. If there were any moral 



184 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

seriousness, of which there is so much in the Bud- 
dhist temples of Japan, to be discovered beneath these 
physically disgusting aspects of the "hoHness" to 
be sought and found in this religious capital of the 
millions of Hinduism, one might pardon much, if 
not all, of that which is so offensive to nose and ears 
and eyes. But the amount of such seriousness, if 
any of it exist, is not obviously large. 

In the evening of the same day, however, I had an 
experience of the "higher Hinduism," although of 
the type of which the Raja Bhinga had spoken with 
such marked contempt, that helped in a measure to 
redeem the impressions of the morning hours. The 
lecture was given under the auspices of the Central 
Hindu College, which was opened in 1898, and there- 
fore only about a year before our visit. This in- 
stitution was founded to give the higher-caste Hin- 
dus an education in Sanskrit and in the mysteries of 
their religion. Its beginnings were in the hands of 
the Theosophists, with Mrs. Besant as its patroness 
and a Dr. Richardson as its Principal. They were 
just then building a recitation-hall with sixteen 
rooms, and near by a home for Mrs. Besant, and 
another for the Principal. But the building in which 
the lecture was to be given was of a quite different 
origin, intention, and architecture. It had been in- 
tended by the previous Raja to be used as a summer 
palace. But before the palace was completed, it 
was struck by lightning; and this the superstitious 



Holy Benares 185 

owner interpreted as a sign from the gods that the 
completion of the palace would be unacceptable to 
them. His son had given it over to the Central 
Hindu College, with considerable adjoining land, in 
perpetuity. Its Hall of Audience had been nearly 
completed when the fateful stroke from heaven came, 
vetoing its further adornment. The hall was two 
lofty stories high, and around three sides of it 
ran galleries supported by arches on beautiful 
slender pillars of a mixed Saracenic and Hindu 
architecture. A platform had been placed in the 
middle of the long high decorated wall at the rear 
of this audience chamber, and on this the lecturer 
was to stand while speaking. 

The extraordinary weirdness of that address, to 
such an audience and in such surroundings, will not 
easily pass from memory. There were no means of 
lighting the hall, except by the candles and lanterns 
which some of the audience had brought with them 
to guide their own footsteps or the drivers of their 
conveyances. These did not even serve to make the 
darkness visible, as the saying is. They did, how- 
ever, avail to make more startling the intent visages 
and piercing eyes of those who sat near enough to 
them to have the light reflected from their faces. 
The large hall was filled with listeners of high intel- 
lectual quality. There was a total absence of the 
restlessness which had often made so embarrassing 
the addressing of an audience in Calcutta. Their 



186 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

dresses showed that they were almost exclusively 
Hindus and Muhammadans ; only a handful of for- 
eigners was mingled with the native crowd. The lec- 
ture was upon "The Reality of Mind" and was dis- 
tinctly more technical than I ventured upon anywhere 
else in India, with the possible exception of Bom- 
bay. But it was listened to throughout^ — and it 
considerably overran the customary limit of an hour 
— without any sign of flagging attention, not to say, 
of willingness to leave the room. When I compli- 
mented Principal Richardson on the behavior of his 
students, many of whom were in the audience, he 
assured me that it was a part of college discipline 
not to permit a student to leave the room while the 
lecture was still in progress. 

The most distinguished of our excursions during 
our stay in India was to Sarnath and Ramnagar, on 
invitation of the Maharaja of Benares. Of all places 
in Asia, and indeed for that matter in the whole 
world, Sarnath is one of the most interesting for 
the student of man's religious history. For here 
was the site of old Benares where Buddha taught, 
And of the various religions, Buddhism has com- 
manded the adherence of the largest number of the 
human race; and of all others, in some important 
respects, it most resemibles Christianity. The tradi- 
tion is that after Gotama, by agonized contemplation 
under the sacred Bo tree, or tree of wisdom, had 
become clear in his own mind, a Buddha, an enlight- 



Holy Benares 187 

ened one, and so had attained to Nirvana, he set 
out to proclaim this new way of salvation to his 
old teachers. Finding them dead, he determined 
to seek out and convert his five former disciples. An 
old hymn tells us how the Buddha, with his counte- 
nance glorified with his discovery, met on the way a 
wandering sophist with whom he had already been 
acquainted. The latter was so struck with Buddha's 
expression of religious exaltation and holy calm that 
he asked whose religion it was that could account for 
the happy change. "I am on my way now," replied 
the enlightened one, "to the city of Benares, to beat 
the drum of the Ambrosia (to set up the light of the 
doctrine of Nirvana) in the darkness of the world." 
And on being questioned further as to his new doc- 
trine, he responded: "Those indeed are conquerors 
who, as I have now, have conquered the three intox- 
ications (the mental intoxication arising from ignor- 
ance, sensuality, or craving after future life). Evil 
dispositions have ceased in me ; therefore is it that 
I am conqueror." Then the sophist answered: "In 
that case, venerable Gotama, your way lies yonder" ; 
but he himself shook his head and turned in the 
opposite direction. 

The direction which Buddha followed led him to 
the Deer-forest, where his five ascetic disciples were 
then living. And here, at the Deer-forest near 
Benares, the "Enlightened One" set up his school 
until he had converted about threescore of personal 



188 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

followers, or devoted disciples, and a certain larger 
number of outsiders who were more or less inclined 
toward his way of salvation. From here he made 
preaching excursions throughout Northern India, 
but never at a very great distance from Benares. 

Chinese Buddhist pilgrims who visited Sarnath 
from the fourth century after Christ onward have 
left accounts of the Buddhist monastery centuries 
earlier founded there. One of them describes "the 
monastery of the Deer Park" as divided into eight 
parts, and surrounded by a wall within which were 
balustrades, two-storied palaces, a stupa of brick 
with a hundred rows of niches around it, each holding 
a statue of Buddha in embossed gold. West of 
the monastery was a tank in which, according to 
tradition, Buddha bathed; and to the West of that, 
another tank where he washed his monk's water- 
pot; and to the North a third where he washed 
his garments. There are still acres of mounds and 
excavations at Sarnath, which remain to show how 
extensive the monastery buildings must at one time 
have been. And besides very ancient tanks and 
stupas (or topes), there are Buddhist relic-towers in 
a good state of preservation at Sarnath. 

As early as about seven o'clock in the morning 
the vehicle of the hospitable Maharaja drove up 
to the door ready to take us up to the spot where 
we were to cross the Ganges. The vehicle was an 
ancient and much dilapidated barouche; but it was 



Holy Benares 189 

accompanied and presided over by four servants 
dressed in faded liveries. Indeed, the driver had a 
large patch on a prominent place in his red coat. 
What, however, was there in such trifles to mar the 
comfort, pleasure, and improvement of the journey; 
or to lessen our gratitude for the thoughtful kind- 
ness which had made it possible.'' 

When we reached a place in the river opposite the 
site of the Raja's ancestral palace at Ramnagar, we 
found a row-boat — or to use the more appropriate 
and imposing word, a royal barge — with five men 
waiting for our arrival. The fog on the Ganges was 
exceedingly thick that winter morning, about the 
thickest fresh-water fog I had ever seen. This made 
the row across the river extremely impressive for 
its exaggerated absence of all sights and sounds. 
All the senses could tell us was that we were on 
yellow water going somewhere enveloped in an im- 
penetrable veil of mist. It was very weird and even 
awesome. One could easily imagine that one was 
being rowed by Charon's boatmen over the Styx to 
the "Land of Silence," even to the "Land of darkness 
and of the Shadow of death." 

As we neared the other bank, after what seemed 
an extravagantly long period of river-passage, the 
mist began to thin out; and peering through it we 
saw a crowd of attendants and sightseers waiting for 
us, and in the midst a stately elephant caparisoned 
and properly officered for our conveyance to the 



190 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

place most sacred in the early history of the spread 
of Buddhism. The name of the elephant, we were 
told, was Radhapi7/ari, the "beloved of Radha," — 
so called after the favorite mistress of the god 
Krishna. Radhapiyari, in spite of her exalted name 
and title to unsual pride, knelt for us most promptly 
and kindly ; and we mounted as promptly and quietly 
as possible, for it is not well to keep an elephant 
whose name is associated with a god too long upon 
her knees. Mistresses of important personages, 
whether human or animal, are apt to have a nasty 
temper and an uncertain way of behaving themselves. 
And her lord and master Krishna was a god of many 
unscrupulous and mischievous tricks. Our much dis- 
tinguished elephant waited, however, until we were 
well ready, and only signified its growing impatience 
by one or two insignificant snorts. 

At the word of command Radhapiyari rose and 
started up the bank with an easy — for an elephant 
— and dignified pace. But when she had passed the 
place of her stabling, she seemed to become less 
pleased with the direction in which she was being 
driven, and less content with her load. Her frequent 
and persistent efforts to turn about, first to the 
right and then to the left, produced a curious 
corkscrew motion that threatened sea-sickness for 
the more sensitive of the four of her owner's guests 
who were seated on her back. Her impatience seemed 
to increase; small, short, but suggestive preliminary 



Holtf Benares 191 

snorts gave token that the ending of this elephant- 
ride might not be altogether so pleasant as its begin- 
ning had been. We did not take kindly to the 
prospect of being run away with by an elephant, al- 
though she bore the name of the favorite mistress of 
the deity celebrated in the "song of the Blessed 
One." But the driver knew his beast; and the event 
showed the wisdom of firm and prompt treatment to 
one of Radhapiyari's temperament and sex. For, 
losing his own patience, he drew out his long steel 
prod and gave the beloved of Radha a most vicious 
stab behind the ear. The quieting, instead of ex- 
asperating — as I who sat next the driver feared 
it would be — effect of this punishment, was positively 
marvellous. From this time onward, the gait of her 
ladyship became less disturbingly serpentine ; her ex- 
postulary snorting entirely ceased. When we reached 
the temple at Sarnath we rode once around it on 
the elephant's back, and then she went submissively 
down on her knees and to us, now safely conveyed 
and dismounted, held out to each one in turn, her 
trtmk in petition of some reward. But alas and 
shame ! — we had not thought to bring even a few 
pies worth of sweets, to say nothing of an apple 
from America or Japan. Notwithstanding such ne- 
glect, a tap of her forehead from her driver caused 
Radhapiyari's trunk to rise in salaam, to which we 
respectfully salaamed in return. 

We then had opportunity to walk about the prin- 



192 Intimate Glimpses of Life i/n India 

cipal temple, or stupa, and examine it at our leisure 
more carefully. Briefly described, the structure con- 
sists of a stone basement 93 feet in diameter, solid- 
ly built by clamping the stone together with iron 
to the height of 43 feet. In each of the eight pro- 
jecting faces of this lower part is a niche, which 
seems to have been intended to contain a figure of 
Buddha in his well-known sitting posture; and be- 
low the niches is a band of exquisitely sculptured 
ornament which encircles the monument. The blocks 
of stone covering the central part are carved in 
relief in a profusion of various forms, geometrical, 
animal, human, and representative of the Hindu gods 
— the whole so much resembling the mixture of Hindu 
and Western art employed upon the mosques we had 
seen in Delhi, that one could scarcely fail to believe 
both to be of substantially the same date. The 
roof is a modification of that prevalent with the 
Hindu temples both hereabouts and in Southern In- 
dia. The detailed description of the other monu- 
ments and the disclosures of the excavations respect- 
ing this ancient seat of Buddhism, belong rather to 
the books on archaeology than to our simple nar- 
rative of a winter^s travel in India. 

We returned from Sarnath in a much more modem 
barouche, which had followed us from the Raja's 
palace to the temple, stopping by the way to see 
one of his several gardens. On arriving at Ram- 
nagar, the residence of the Maharaja of Benares, 



Holy Benares 193 

we were first of all shown the royal Bengal tiger; 
the beast, however, would not be provoked to any- 
thing more terrific than rolling over on his back, 
stretching wide open his jaws, and uttering a few 
angry growls. We were then shown through the 
palace; but since his Excellency was absent tiger- 
hunting and the library closed, we could not see its 
greatest treasure, the celebrated illuminated copy 
of the Ramayana. A row across the Ganges and 
a drive down its opposite bank brought us to our 
host's house in time for tiflin. 

At 4:30 that afternoon I spoke in the hall of the 
Mission's high-school building on "Essential Chris- 
tianity." The audience, both in numbers and in qual- 
ity, was much inferior to that of the night before; 
and the embarrassment as to what should be appro- 
priately said was increased by the fact that mission- 
aries who had enjoyed in England a somewhat 
thorough theological training, and Hindu boys 
scarcely above the age of infants, made up a con- 
siderable portion of the audience. 

An "At home," at which most of the guests were 
missionaries and their families, formed the last but 
not least pleasant of our experiences in the religious 
capital of India. From one of the guests, who was 
the son of a missionary but who was employed as a 
registrar in the government service, I heard for the 
first time about the incoming system of using "thumb- 
impressions" as a check to perjury and other forms 



194 Intimate Glimpses of Life i/n India 

of fraud. The willingness to commit perjury by 
denying their signatures was nearly universally 
prevalent among the natives of Benares and vicinity. 
At the request of my host I spoke about missions 
in Japan ; but stopped sooner than I should otherwise 
have done, for my hearers were becoming exceeding- 
ly nervous at the unusual mutters of thunder and 
the occasional flashes of lightning. And, indeed, 
there was good reason for such nervousness ; for to 
be out in the night with native drivers and untrained 
horses, in a storm of thunder and lightning, involves 
no insignificant danger. The scene through the open 
door, as the guests were taking their carriages, was 
a very unusual and unusually wild one, for that 
part of the world, at that time of year. And when 
we were called at halfpast five next morning, to take 
the train away from "Holy Benares," it was still 
raining heavily. 



CHAPTER IX 



THE CAVES OF ELLORA 



WE were now going from the ancient but still 
active and populous center of Hinduism, both 
of the vulgar and of the so-called "higher'* sort, to 
the region where the three greater religions of India, 
and the political and social forces supporting them, 
had for centuries contended for the supremacy. In 
this region their successive triumphs over the re- 
ligious consciousness of the people had recorded 
themselves in the form of monastic cells and temples 
cut out of the "everlasting hills" in enduring rock. 
In the way of structures designed for religious uses, 
it is difficult to conceive of a more striking contrast 
than that between the filth and tawdriness of tlie 
temples of Holy Benares and the solitariness and 
suggestive solemnity of the Caves of Ellora. 

But we were also going from places where, in 
spite of a scarcity of food and some additional suf- 
fering on the part of that two hundred and thirty 
millions of the two hundred and thirty-one millions 
of the population of India who are always hungry, 
there were great rivers still flowing and few or none 

195 



196 Intimate Glvrrvpses of Life in India 

of the poorest were starving before your very eyes, 
and man could not help, to a region where the fam- 
ine was most bitter, where cattle and human beings 
were lying dead or dying of starvation in the fields 
and by the roadsides ; and where, on account of the 
numbers, efficient universal succor was practically 
impossible. (Lest the reader doubt this statement, 
let him give full credit to the story of the driver of 
one of the "water trains" on his way to one of the 
cantonments, who at a way-station was "held up" 
by scores of women begging "Sahib, just one drink 
of water before we die," and refusing to move out of 
the way of his engine until their petition had been 
granted. That train-load of water was emptied by 
the thirsty of the surrounding villages ; and its piti- 
ful train-crew went back to the source of supply for 
another load.) 

It was, indeed, only on this excursion that we got 
a real taste of the bitterness of the famine of 1899- 
1901 in India. The foreigners, in general, and the 
well-to-do natives who dwelt in the cities, and even 
the half-starved crowds who still had strength 
enough left to walk or crawl into the cities, did not 
show to others, or themselves know by experience, 
the severest aspects of that terrible season. It was 
in the country, among the poorest agricultural 
classes (and the greater multitudes of India's popu- 
lation belong to these classes) that the horrors of 
such a famine became unmistakably clear — the hor- 



The Caves of EUora 197 

rors, and the helplessness in any satisfying degree 
of human agencies for immediate relief. It was, 
then, a valuable experience for us as travelers, if we 
were to understand and sympathize, to be subjected 
ourselves, though only for a day or two and in slight 
degree, under the stress of famine-hunger. 

But we were also going from those parts of North- 
ern and Northeastern India, where there was at the 
time comparatively little plague, back to the region 
of the Deccan and the plague-stricken Presidency 
of Bombay. And as it so happened, we were to hear 
on the way some concrete and authentic stories from 
one who had had much experience with that most 
terrific of pestilences, the "black death," the "great 
death," the bubonic plague. For when we changed 
to the through Bombay express at Mogul Serai, we 
were put into the same compartment with a young 
woman who, as it soon was made known to us, was 
a government nurse going home to England on her 
well-deserved furlough. From her my wife obtained 
by questioning many stories, modestly told by the 
brave woman, to illustrate, among other features, 
the freaky and incalculable way in which the plague 
often does its work of death. A high-caste Hindu 
woman, who was about to be confined, was brought 
into the hospital already afflicted with the pest. 
When her hour came, it seemed necessary to the 
nurses to summon a European doctor to assist her 
delivery with instruments. But her husband and 



198 Intimate Glimpses of Life vn India 

other family friends refused and said that, although 
they much wished an heir, they would rather she and 
the child should both die, and the estate be forfeited 
to another branch of the family, than that she should 
be defiled by the slightest touch from any other man 
than a Hindu. Strangely enough, the gods justified 
and rewarded their fidelity ; for the child survived 
and the mother recovered. In another case, a woman 
far gone with the plague was brought to the hospital, 
and refused to have hter nursing child taken from 
her breast. There the infant clung, and in trying 
to satisfy its hunger, not only drew what nourish- 
ment it could from its dying mother, but even seized 
upon the poultice with which the mother's breast had 
been dressed. The mother died, but the infant took 
no harm. Sad indeed was the fate of the English 
nurse into whose open eye a delirious patient spat, 
as she bent over him in the effort to relieve liis agony. 
The poor girl died within thirty-six hours. 

There were several experiences which occurred on 
the way from Benares to the Caves of EUora which 
left a distinct trail of suffering over the remainder 
of this winter in India. The night which I spent on 
the narrow shelf dignified with the title of an "upper 
berth," so filled my lungs with dust and cinders that 
it brought on an attack of pernicious influenza, from 
which it was impossible to recover until we had got 
to sea again. When the train reached Munmar 
Junction the next morning an hour late, we found 



The Caves of EUora 199 

letters which resulted in sending our native travel- 
ing companion on to Amednagar "with the luggage." 
With the luggage he went indeed ; for he did not even 
leave the bundle of bedding, which was quite indis- 
pensable for our comfort in the bungalow of the 
Nizam of Hyderabad which His Excellency had 
placed at our disposal during our stay at the Caves 
of Ellora. However, we survived this and other 
slight inconveniences, and look back upon this part 
of our travels as among the most interesting and 
informing. 

The Nizam of Hyderabad is the principal Muham- 
madan ruler of India. The family was founded by 
Asaf Jah, a distinguished Turcoman soldier of 
Aurangzeb, who was appointed in 1713 subahdar of 
the Deccan, with the title of "regulator of the state," 
but who rebelled and eventually threw off the control 
of the court at Delhi. This part of India continued 
to be what it had been for centuries before, the the- 
atre of struggles between the Hindu and the Moslem 
rulers and the religions which they respectively pro- 
tected and patronized. At the time of the Indian 
Mutiny in 1857 it was ruled by the father of the 
man who was Nizam at the time of our visit; and 
since he remained faithful to the English, his son 
had become established firmly as the principal inde- 
pendent native Muhammadan ruler upon the entire 
continent. Indeed, Hyderabad is the principal na- 
tive state of India. The territory over which the 



200 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

Nizam rules is rather more than 80,000 square miles, 
and is inhabited by nearly 12,000,000 of people. Its 
capital city is the fourth largest in India, and boasts 
approximately a half-million of inhabitants. On the 
whole, the present Nizam has been a wise and suc- 
cessful ruler. He was the originator of the Imperial 
Service troops which at that time formed the chief 
organization among the natives for the defence of 
India; and which in the present European war has 
rendered such hearty and efficient service to the 
cause of Great Britain and its Allies. Among his 
most recent improvements at that particular time 
was a railway which was to traverse a rich cotton 
country, and which on account of the abundant sup- 
ply of cheap coal available could give low fares to 
the natives and yet afford a handsome revenue to 
the state. That very year of famine, 1899-1900, 
the total number of the Nizam's subjects receiving 
relief from his bounty rose to nearly a half-million 
daily. It was the railway just referred to which, 
although it was not yet finished through, we were 
to take in order to reach the point favored with such 
accommodation, nearest to our destination. The 
train which stood waiting for the belated Bombay 
express, on the track of the Hyderabad-Godavari 
railway, we boarded forthwith ; and after some hours 
of jogging along over its recently built and there- 
fore rough track, reached the station named Daula- 
tabad from the world-renowned ancient ruined rock- 
fortress a short distance away. 



The Caves of EUora 201 

At the station we were met by Dr. Ballantine of 
the American Board Mission, who had sent across 
country his tonga with its bullocks as draft-horses, 
and two servants in charge, to carry what of sup- 
plies of water, food, and bedding were necessary for 
us and for the animals. He had himself preceded 
the servants and the supplies on his wheel, — a much 
lighter and speedier vehicle than the tonga and the 
bullocks. 

Our destination for the night was Rauza or Rosa, 
some eight miles from the station, near which was 
the Nizam's bungalow where the servants were to 
prepare our dinner and beds. It was necessary to 
rise very early the next morning so as to accomplish 
the somewhat difficult pedestrian task of walking to 
the Caves and substantially completing our super- 
ficial examination of them before the severer heat of 
middle and early afternoon came overhead. 

The intending visitor to the only "caves" in all 
India which rival in interest the Caves of Ellora is 
advised by Murray's Hand-Book "to arrange for a 
bullock-cart with a change of bullocks on the road 
for each person of the party. Two persons in one 
cart will find it extremely uncomfortable. A trav- 
eler who does not know the language well must be 
accompanied by a ser\^ant or interpreter, and each 
person must have bedding and provisions." After 
seeing us ensconced in the bullock-cart, back to back 
with the driver's seat and facing to the rear so that 
the landscape opened to view only after it had been 



202 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

already traversed, Dr. Ballantine mounted his wheel, 
and directing the servants to follow in his tracks, 
soon disappeared in the distance. We did not, in- 
deed, find the bullock-cart "extremely uncomfort- 
able" ; but neither, on the other hand, could it be 
called exactly comfortable. We did soon find, how- 
ever, that, in view of the fact that neither we nor 
the servants were facile in the use of the language 
of the country (for in India there is no one native 
language which serves the purposes of easy com- 
munication in all parts) we had lost our guide and 
interpreter. Without him, our bullock-cart on the 
plains of the Deccan was not unlike a ship at sea 
without compass or pilot. 

The bullocks were already pretty thoroughly used 
up by their long journey from home to the station 
at Daulatabad; and so they walked very slowly ex- 
cept when the shouting and gesticulating of the 
driver started them into a brief fit of ambling. The 
view from the highland to which we were now rising 
was very beautiful, especially as it began to be 
lighted up by a sun that had declined far toward 
its setting. The surrounding country is ordinarily 
deemed fertile, and is for that part of India thickly 
inhabited; although it now sustains only a fraction 
of its once teeming and thrifty population. Signs 
of the prevailing famine were by no means lacking 
by the way; indeed in spots they were only too ob- 
vious, abundant and frightful. Such signs were the 



The Caves of Ellora 203 

bleaching bones of the animals which had already 
perished from lack of food and water; and the ema- 
ciated bodies of human beings wandering in the fields 
or lying by the roadside. Our way lay through two 
ruined villages, — Daulatabad, whose wonderful rock- 
fortress we were to visit on our return journey, and 
Rauza, the Kerbela, or holy shrine of the Deccan 
Mussulmans, distinguished as the burial-place of 
some of the most notable of the Mogul dynasty. 
Among them the most notable of all is no other than 
Aurangzeb, the rebellious and traitorous son of 
Shah Jehan. It was he who surrounded the city with 
a high stone wall with battlements and loopholes. 
But this, and the many mosques and tombs which 
abound in every direction on each side of the high- 
way, are now largely in ruins. Rauza is still, how- 
ever, a place of great resort by the Muhammadans 
in the summer months, on account of its mild cli- 
mate ; and nearby an annual fair is held in February, 
at which thousands of the faithful are accustomed 
to assemble for those mixed purposes of trade, gos- 
sip, and worship, which throughout the Orient bring 
the crowds together at all their festivals. 

The slowness of our willing but tired beasts had 
now let the darkness overtake us ; and the questions 
put to the few Muhammadans who stayed to be 
questioned, whether the foreign Sahib had passed 
that way, either elicited conflicting answers or no 
answer at all. It was becoming impossible to dis- 



^04 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

tinguish even the roadway from the upland plain 
over which we were taking no well-marked course, not 
to speak of steering the bullock-cart by the slender 
thread of a track left by the wheel of the bicycle. 
We seemed to be journeying over a trackless waste — 
somewhat up-hill, to be sure, but coming no whence 
and going no whither, and with no sign or voice to 
tell us of our destination or of the course which, 
even if it could be confidently followed, would surely 
bring us to the desired place. We could not com- 
municate, either to suggest or to inquire, with any 
one who might be supposed to have the requisite 
knowledge. The situation was not really threaten- 
ing, — or at least, I did not suppose that it was. But 
it did make a strong impression of unfamiliarity and 
weirdness upon the imagination. And perhaps the 
exhortation of the runaway Venetian boy who had 
such remarkable adventures and became so consider- 
able a personage in India in the seventeenth century, 
was not entirely inapplicable to our situation at that 
later time. "I would warn the reader,'' says Nic- 
colao Manucci, the so-called "Pepys of Mogul In- 
dia," "never to stray far from his companions, be- 
cause he might come across robbers in these woods. 
When they find any person apart from his com- 
pany they rob him." But nothing of this sort was 
to be our fate; for, thanks to the suggestion of the 
feminine art of devising expedients, by making sure 
that the servant should frequently recover and verify 



The Caves of EUora 205 

the lost bicycle track with the light of a lantern, just 
as we had begun seriously to contemplate spending 
the night in the open air in the bullock-cart, we saw 
ahead of us the light of a candle set in the window 
of the bungalow. 

A very good bungalow is that which the Nizam of 
Hyderabad lias provided for his guests, from which 
to set forth to explore the caves of Ellora. On ar- 
rival there we found that another missionary friend 
was waiting for us, — Mr. Fairbanks having come 
across country, also on his wheel, to welcome us, and 
with us to have a first sight of the Caves of Ellora. 
It did not take the servants long to prepare a whole- 
some dinner ; and since our friends had brought along 
an abundance of bedding for the entire party, we 
were in every way made comfortable. After dinner 
we tried faithfully to study again through Fergus- 
son's account of the wonderful architectural struc- 
tures which we were to see with our own eyes on the 
following morning; but unconquerable sleepiness soon 
overcame us, and we went early to bed. For the de- 
tails of what we saw of these wonderful structures 
cut out of the solid rock, when regarded from the 
architectural point of view, we must refer the reader, 
some evening when he is not so sleepy as were we that 
evening, to Fergusson's RocJc-cut Temples of India. 

The Caves of Ellora are in several respects the 
best worth visiting of all the similar sights in the 
Continent of India. The Caves of Ajanta surpass 



206 Intimate Glimpses of Life m India 

them, indeed, in that they "furnish a history of 
Buddhist art, and illustrate the legends of the re- 
ligion and the domestic life of the people from shortly 
after the reign of Asoka to shortly before the expul- 
sion of the faith from India. '^ The oldest of them 
is older than any of the EUora caves ; it is believed 
by some to date from about 200 B. C. The decoration 
of the Ajanta caves is on the whole more varied, rich, 
and beautiful. But the Caves of Ellora are much 
more accessible, — especially since the Nizam's rail- 
way has been built ; they illustrate the religious sym- 
bolism and development of the Jain and Hindu, as 
well as the Buddhist, religions ; and one of these 
temples, which is not only itself, but also has its 
court and immediate surroundings, all sculptured 
out of the solid rock, surpasses in size and magnifi- 
cence, and in daring of conception and execution, 
anything else of its kind in that country, if not in 
the whole world. 

To give an understanding of the gross features of 
this remarkable series of rock-cells and rock-temples 
we may be pardoned for quoting two official descrip- 
tions. "Architecturally," says Mr. Fergusson, "the 
Ellora Caves differ from those of Ajanta, in conse- 
quence of their being excavated in the sloping sides 
of a hill, and not in a nearly perpendicular cliff. 
From this formation of the ground almost all the 
caves at Ellora have courtyards in front of them. 
Frequently also an outer wall of rock, with an en- 



The Caves of EUora 207 

trance through it, left standing, so that the caves 
are not generally seen from the outside at all, and a 
person might pass along their front without being 
aware of their existence, unless warned of the fact." 
"The Caves," writes Dr. Burgess, "are excavated in 
the face of a hill, or rather the scarp of a large 
plateau, and run nearly North and South for about 
one and a quarter miles. The scarp at each end 
of this interval throws out a horn toward the West. 
It is where the scarp at the South end begins to turn 
to the West that the earliest caves — a group of 
Buddhistic ones — are situated; and in the North 
horn is the Indra Sabha or Jain group, at the other 
extremity of the series. The ascent of the ghat 
passes up the South side of Kailas, the third temple 
of the Brahmanical group, and over the roof of the 
Das Avatar, the second of them. Sixteen caves lie 
to the South of Kailas, and nearly as many to the 
North, but the latter are scattered over a greater 
distance." 

After a very early chota liazri we walked down 
the path of the sloping rocky hill, into and out of 
which the temples are cut, and began our tour of 
inspection at the oldest on the Buddhist end of the 
series. It being the season for one of the Muham- 
madan festivals following the close of the fast of 
Ramadan, we were not so much annoyed as is usually 
the case with professional, sturdy beggars. Even 
the man at the foot of the hill who collects fees from 



208 Inthnate Glimpses of Life in India 

all the visitors in the name of the Nizam of Hyder- 
abad was at first off duty attending the festival ; but 
the bruit of our presence reached him in good time 
and he appeared with his visitor's book later in the 
day. 

As has already been said, these monkish cells and 
temples hewn out of the rock in the sloping side of 
this cliff extend a full mile and a quarter from South 
to North, and with their chronological relation cor- 
responding in the main to their locaHty, in the order 
of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain. Of the Buddhist 
series the cave which bears the name Dherwara is 
the oldest and one of the most important ; one other, 
the Vishmakarma or "Carpenter's Cave,"^ is a paral- 
lelogram about 85 feet long, with a ribbed roof ; and 
a third, the Tin Tai, is three stories in height. To 
me the most interesting thing in these oldest of the 
Buddhistic caves was the posture of the effigies of 
Buddha. He is not represented as seated in his cus- 
tomary posture but with both legs hanging down 
from the chair. 

Of the Hindu series the most noteworthy, and in- 
deed the most wonderful of all rock-temples, or even 
of architectural remains, in all India, is Kailas, — a 
structure at the sight of which one's amazement 
grows with every moment spent in its inspection. "It 
is not a mere interior chamber cut in the rock," says 
Mr. Fergusson, "but is a model of a complete temple 
such as might have been erected on the plain. In 




MOST WONDERFUL OF ALL ROCK-TEMPLES 



The Caves of Ellora 209 

other words, the rock has been cut away externally 
as well as internally." Kailas is, then, an enormous 
monolith, a huge temple completely isolated from the 
surrounding rock of the hillside, itself made out of 
one unbroken piece of stone. From the solid rock 
surrounding this monolithic temple an enormous 
court has been excavated for it, which averages 154< 
ft. wide at the base, and is 276 ft. long at the level 
of the base, and with a scarp at the back 107 ft. 
high. On the outside of the curtain of rock which 
has been left in front of this court, are carved mon- 
strous forms of Shiva and Vishnu and other Hindu 
gods ; and several rooms are excavated inside its 
thickness. This rock-screen is pierced in the center 
by a passage which also has rooms excavated on 
either hand. The front portion of the court is some- 
what lower than the main part ; it has, however, two 
gigantic elephants cut out of the rock on the North 
and South sides. Ascending a few steps we enter 
the great hall of the temple, in front of which and 
connected with it by a bridge is a sheltered shrine 
for the sacred bull of Shiva, on either side of which 
stands a pillar of stone 45 ft. in height. Along the 
North side and rear of the court runs a series of 
excavations in two tiers with beautifully sculptured 
pillars. The outside as well as inside of this temple 
is profusely decorated with sculptures cut out of 
the huge monolith, or left as partly undercut pieces 
of the rocky hillside ; and much of it shows signs of 



SIO Intimate Glhnpses of Life in India 

having originally been gaily painted. The Kailas 
is said to have been excavated about the eighth cen- 
tury by Raja Edu, who founded the town of Ellora, 
as a thank-offering for a cure effected by the waters 
of a spring near the place. It is dedicated to Shiva. 

We had our breakfast that memorable morning 
sitting on the ground in the court of Kailas, or on 
the steps leading up to the temple. This finished, we 
made a more rapid survey of such of the other rock- 
temples as were most accessible, comprising some of 
the finest of the Jain temples at the extreme North 
end of the series. But the heat of the noontime 
sun became so overpowering that the rest of our 
tour of inspection was only very superficial. We 
reached the bungalow at the top of the hill pretty 
well spent, rested until S :30, then had a hasty lunch- 
eon and took the tonga for the return journey to 
the station at Daulatabad. 

The bullocks were much fresher than they had 
been the day before ; the daylight enabled us to take 
an interest in the things by the wayside ; and so the 
return-trip was really shorter, and seemed much 
shorter still, though in one way not so impressive as 
had been the journey of the night before, without 
guidance, over a trackless plain, in a darkness re- 
lieved only by the light of a single candle in a lan- 
tern. The fatigue and monotony of riding in a bul- 
lock-cart without springs were broken by two stops ; 
one at the tomb of Aurangzeb where is enshrined 



The Caves of Ellora 211 

part of the heart of this rascal, who probably did 
more than any one else by his base conduct to weaken 
and bring to a condition of decline the Empire 
founded by Akbar. Here we encountered a larger 
than usual crowd of sturdy beggars. The wheels of 
our friends easily escaped these nuisances ; but the 
beggars had no difficulty in keeping up with the bul- 
locks and the tonga. One big, well-fed lout of a 
fellow followed us for more than a half mile begging 
for a dole and eying us with threatening in his coun- 
tenance. With him it was easier than usual to 
harden one's heart against the monotonous whine of 
"Sahib, backshish; Sahib, backshish." 

The two cyclists went ahead and, in spite of the 
denials of the guards, obtained official permission for 
us to pay a flying visit to the fortress of Daulatabad. 
This fortress, like its neighboring temple of Kailas, 
is by way of a structure of solid rock, one of the 
wonders of the world. Out of the plain rises to the 
height of 500-600 ft. a huge conical rock of granite ; 
and the sides of this have been scarped perpendicu- 
larly to the extent of from 80 to 120 ft. all around 
the base. Of the once populous and fortified city, 
there now remain only a few mean houses and huts, 
for the most part confined to the side of the rock 
nearest the road. At the bottom of the scarp is a 
ditch, before reaching which four lines of wall, in- 
cluding the outside wall of the city, had to be taken, 
and which when reached, could be crossed only by a 



^12 Intimate Glimpses of Life vn India 

stone causeway so narrow that it admitted only two 
men abreast. The sole means of reaching the top 
of the rock, where the palace and mosque and other 
princely buildings were situated, with the garrison 
and the munitions and stores which they required 
in case of attack, was through a narrow passage 
hewn in the solid stone. This passage is totally 
dark and winds around in the interior of the rock- 
fortress ; and while at first it is high enough to allow 
one to stand erect, it becomes about half-way to 
where it comes out into the open, a steep stair, so 
low that one must crouch and so narrow that even 
a warrior ascending in single file could not draw his 
sword. To increase the unpleasant features of fight- 
ing one's way up this gallery, an iron grating was 
spread over the top of it in one place ; and on this 
grating a huge fire could be kindled and kept up, 
fiercely burning, by the garrison above. While hu- 
miliating ourselves to reach the upper end of this 
passage, we could cherish the satisfaction of know- 
ing that his Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, 
and all the gaily dressed foreign and native ladies, 
and all the servants and the silver and the viands, in 
order to reach the palace on the top, had to go by 
the same painful and humbling route, when the Nizam 
of Hyderabad a few years before had entertained his 
distinguished foreign guests in this unconventional 
place. In spite of its seemingly impregnable char- 
acter under all ancient and mediaeval means of at- 



The Caves of EUora 213 

tack, the fortress of Daulatabad has several times 
passed between Hindu and Muhammadan hands. 

When we arrived at the station we bade good-bye 
to our friends who were intending to bicycle home 
in the long moonlit night, and settled ourselves to 
waiting for the train which was expected to land us 
not very late at night at the Junction, where it was 
arranged that the early morning-express should pick 
up the car in which we were to lodge and take us on 
to Ahmednagar. We had no success in getting any 
supper, not to say dinner, at the station of Daulata- 
bad. For although the station-master showed his 
willingness by opening the only storehouse of any 
kind of food the station contained, — a tin of biscuit, 
— the amount of other life being already in the way 
of appropriating the contents made us resolve that 
our own lives were not as yet in such immediate or 
prospective danger as to force us to share with the 
worms the remnants of the infested biscuit. Besides, 
we were assured that we should arrive at Munmar 
Junction before the station would be closed for the 
night and so in time for a hot supper. But this was 
not to be. For when our car, which was late in ar- 
riving at Daulatabad, had jogged along at the rate 
of ten miles an hour and we had reached the Junc- 
tion only after midnight, we found the station dark 
and closed, the station-master afield somewhere in 
the large yard, and no one on hand who knew any- 
thing about the arrangements which had been made 



^14 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

for our accommodation. We did, however, find a 
boy who undertook to guide us down the yard with 
a lantern, in the hope that we might discover for our- 
selves the car in which to find shelter for the re- 
mainder of the night. The walk was gloomy and 
even threatening enough; for it was between tracks 
and in a yard where the shunting of trains and single 
cars was constantly going on. Arrived at the spot 
where some empty passenger cars were standing, the 
boy then for the first time — native fashion — con- 
fessed that he did not at all know which of the <5ars 
had been allotted to us. He went to inquire, leav- 
ing us in the dark and with no very sure prospect of 
any shelter, not to say, "lying-down room," for the 
entire night. When he did return to identify the 
car belonging to the right train, it was discovered 
that the door next to us was locked and our guide 
had forgotten to bring the key. But we clambered 
over between cars and got in by the other door, — 
only to find that no light could be had until a mes- 
senger had been sent for a key to turn on the gas. 
At last, however, we could lie down in our clothes on 
the seats, take turn and turn about, trying to nap it 
and standing guard ; but were prevented from sleep- 
ing much even when the turn came, by the hubbub 
of a busy railway-yard around us on every side, — 
until the time (6 A. M.) came for the morning 
through-express. Alas ! we were again disappointed 
in obtaining the coveted morsels of food, for which 



The Cams of EUora SI 5 

we were getting more and more hungry. For instead 
of picking us up before breakfast and running us up 
to the station, where we could get a meal with the 
other passengers, they picked us up after the stop 
for breakfast for the other passengers had been 
made, and carried us off without any breakfast. 
Since we were now passing through "famine coun- 
try," in the strictest and most terrific sense of the 
words, it was impossible by the way to procure any- 
thing to eat (sic) but a cup of tea without sugar or 
milk and a couple of shriveled oranges. There were 
more reasons than one, then, why we were glad to 
reach Ahmednagar, although not at all regretful that 
we had seen Daulatabad and the Caves of Ellora, or 
even that we had been brought into a condition of 
keener sympathy with the famine sufferers by going 
some thirty-odd hours without food, in the heat and 
dust of the Deccan. 



CHAPTER X 



AN OASIS IN THE DESERT 



AHMEDNAGAR is the third city in size in the 
Deccan, having at the time of our visit some- 
what more than 40,000 inhabitants ; and although it 
has httle or nothing in the way of architecture or 
other interesting objects to attract the foreign vis- 
itor, it is not without considerable historical interest. 
It was founded at the very close of the fifteenth cen- 
tury by Ahmad Nizam Shah Bahri, on the site of a 
more ancient city, Bhingar. The Portuguese pirates, 
who then ravaged a large part of the West Coast of 
India, for many years maintained friendly relations 
with Ahmednagar, so that they did not interfere 
with the extension of its ruler's power over a large 
surrounding territory, or with the growing prosper- 
ity of the city. But it feU into Akbar's hands in 
1605, as the result of a celebrated siege in which 
figured Chand Bibi, the widow of Ali Adil Shah, 
whose story has been told in an English novel by 
Meadows Taylor, with the title "The Noble Queen." 
From this time on the city and territory of Ahmed- 
nagar was a possession contested by the Moslems, 

216 



An Oasis m the Desert 217 

the Malirattas, and the British, until the latter cap- 
tured it under General Welleslej, afterwards Duke 
of Wellington, on the 12th of August, 1803. A 
tamarind tree under which the Duke is said to have 
taken his luncheon, is still pointed out on the South- 
west side of the Fort. Although Ahmednagar was 
afterward for a short time restored to the Mahrat- 
tas, it came finally into the possession of the British 
in 1817, since which time it has enjoyed such pros- 
perity as the firm maintenance of order and respect 
for public justice can bestow. 

This part of the Deccan is at best "a dry and 
thirsty land," the entire District being described as 
"a comparatively barren tract with a small rainfall" ; 
and although the city is situated on a so-called river, 
the signs of universal distress from scarcity of water- 
supply were more obvious at Ahmednagar than at 
any other point which we visited during the winter. 
Just outside the city was a "famine-relief camp," 
where 9,000 human beings who could only be fitly 
described as scarcely "living skeletons," were col- 
lected for being fed sufficiently to keep them from a 
speedier death by starvation. Of these 7,000 were 
doing some work — for the most part by carrying 
small baskets of earth upon their heads — at building 
the embankments of an artificial lake which was to 
hold a three-year supply of water from the river 
Siva, on whose left bank the city stands, which could 
be stored in the seasons when the rains did their duty 



218 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

by way of supplying the river. The workmen and 
workwomen were housed in tents of straw open at 
both ends ; but about 2,000 children and sick and 
feeble ones, quite unable to do any work, were cared 
for in a separate enclosure. The wages earned by 
those at work were, for the men from 1-8 to 2 annas, 
and for the women and children, 1 anna, 3 pies per 
day. But only the week before, our hosts. Dr. and 
Mrs. Robert Hume, had received from the United 
States nearly £7,000 ; and they will spend as much 
of this large sum as possible according to the same 
wise plan of helping those who can, among the starv- 
ing people, still try to help themselves. It is the 
native character of the millions of India, with the 
exception of some of the Northern races and the 
comparatively few who, with the adoption of the 
Christian faith, have taken to themselves, together 
with reliance on God, its spirit of self-reliance, to 
lean heavily and even unscrupulously on any arm ex- 
tended with the offer of assistance. 

That sad winter the city and district of Ahmedna- 
gar had their full share of that other terror which 
was wasting the whole of that part of India, — the 
bubonic plague. As we drove back from oui* visit to 
the famine camp through the native city, the marks 
of its devastations were everywhere evident. The 
Autumn before the death-rate from plague had 
reached no fewer than seventy a day. But although 
Ahmednagar has a native population of 1,000 or 



An Oasis m the Desert 219 

more Christian converts openly connected with its 
Christian institutions, only two of this number had 
died of plague. The principal real causes of their es- 
cape were undoubtedly these three: innoculation 
against the plague, while refused by the Hindus on 
grounds of superstition, had been accepted by the na- 
tive Christians under the influence and example of the 
missionaries ; cleanliness of their persons, their 
homes, and their habits had already been in their 
lives substituted for heathenish filth, physical and 
moral ; and their faith in God and in their foreign 
friends had kept them from all panic and had made 
them willing to obey orders and to follow good ex- 
amples. All this, as a matter of course, was at- 
tributed by the more ignorant of their Hindu fellow 
townsmen, either to the goodness and power of the 
gods the Christians worshipped, or to the favoring 
craft of their protecting demons. 

It was an inexpressible comfort to be again, after 
so long an interval, with home-friends and in a home 
modelled after the familiar New England type. A 
hot bath, and food and rest, a pleasant drive over 
the cantonment, and a good bed for the night, did 
much for the heartening of us both. I had, how- 
ever, contracted a very severe and persistent influ- 
enza, and a threatening of the recurrence of inter- 
mittent fever, — evil companions which could not be 
shaken ofl* during our stay in that climate and which 
threatened to wreck, but did not quite succeed in 



220 Intimate Glimpses of Life m India 

wrecking, all my plans for usefulness in Southern 
India and Ceylon. 

The remainder of our altogether too brief stay in 
Ahmednagar was almost exclusively spent in getting 
acquainted with the work of the Christian Missions 
established there. And since this work seemed to be, 
on the whole, the most practically wise, effective 
among all classes, and organized in a thoroughly 
business-like way, with which we came into close con- 
tact anywhere, it may fitly serve as the occasion for 
one or two observations on missionary work in gen- 
eral, throughout India. 

One of the most interesting and hopeful of the 
institutions of missionary enterprise on its side of 
active evangelizing was the "Second Church of 
Christ" in Ahmednagar, which is composed of con- 
verted low-caste Hindus ; and which from the first 
has refused to receive any assistance from the out- 
side, but has manfully and successfully struggled to 
sustain itself. As throwing light upon the work 
among the Brahmans I prized highly a long con- 
versation with a Mr. N. V. Tilak, himself a con- 
verted Brahman, in which he gave me a most intelli- 
gent and sensible account of the present condition 
of Brahmanism among the Mahrattas. While still a 
Brahman, Mr. Tilak had reflected carefully, and had 
observed as widely as his condition afforded oppor- 
tunity, with a view to discover elsewhere, or to de- 
vise for himself, some such reformed religion as 



An Oasis in the Desert 221 

should lift up his own people from their low estate. 
How low this estate had become, intellectually, so- 
cially and morally, my informant discussed with con- 
siderable detail. The picture he drew of the Brah- 
mans, both high-caste and low-caste, was not flatter- 
ing; but then it was no more damaging to Brah- 
manical character and its pride of caste than had 
been the picture drawn by the ascetic Raja of 
Benares. And Mr. Tilak's estimate of the social and 
family life of the Hindus was no lower than that 
which I had heard in Bombay from the lips of their 
sincere and w^ell-informed Parsee friend, Mr. Mala- 
bari, or from the converted but sensible and sincere 
Brahman in Calcutta, Mr. Kali Banurji. 

As a result of his meditations and observations 
Mr. Tilak had come to the conclusion that Chris- 
tianity, as contrasted with Hinduism, even in the 
latter's most attractive speculative form and as held 
by the most thoughtful and moral of the high-caste 
Brahmans, commended itself especially in these three 
particulars : First and most important and funda- 
mental of all, in respect of its clear and elevated and 
morally inspiring conception of God. I have already 
said that I have seldom or never met a thinker whose 
views on theology, in the narrowest meaning of that 
term (as doctrine of the divine attributes and divine 
relations to man) corresponded more nearly to my 
own, than those of Professor Bhandarkar of Bom- 
bay. But Professor Bhandarkar's views did not 



222 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

merely resemble in the most important ways the 
views of modern religious philosophy ; they were sub- 
stantially those views, and though views of a Brah- 
man — or at least, of a thinker who had not declared 
himself a convert to Christian thought — none the 
less Christian monotheistic views, and not Brahman- 
ical views at all. It is not to be denied, however, 
that all through the centuries of the development of 
Brahmanical philosophy there have been occasional 
thinkers who have in their conception of God come 
so close to Christian monotheism as to make it some- 
what difficult to distinguish between the two. But 
these views, if they really have their origin in Brah- 
manical philosophy, almost always break down and 
lose their seemingly "clear and elevated and morally 
inspiring'' character when they come to be tested by 
comparison with the Christian conception of personal 
life. 

Mr. Tilak went on to mention, as the second great 
distinction between the higher Brahmanism and 
Christianity, the value which the latter sets on hu- 
man personality, and the help which it renders in 
realizing the ideal of manhood. And, indeed, as we 
have already pointed out, it is a defective and 
morally misleading failure to conceive of God as 
perfect Ethical Spirit and Source of all personal 
righteousness, which constitutes the fundamental 
weakness of Brahmanical, and indeed, in general of 
Oriental religious philosophy. This failure has its 



An Oasis m the Desert 223 

inevitable effect in the undervaluation of the human 
person, — an effect which operates powerfully in 
shaping the constitution of civil government and the 
character of all the principal social relations. The 
individual human being does not count for much; 
because he is not regarded as intrinsically capable 
of developing that type of life, the personal life, 
which sums up within itself all that is of real value. 
In religion, the inspiring ideal of human personal life 
is to have it patterned after the Divine Life, the 
ideal of perfect Ethical Spirit, the struggle to at- 
tain, not a loss of the Self, or person, by absorption 
into God, but a moral likeness of the self-conscious, 
voluntary human personality to the perfect personal 
Hfe of God. 

The transition, so logically made by reflective 
thought, from a higher conception of the Divine 
Being to a more spiritual view of man's relations to 
that Being, was clearly apprehended by this con- 
verted Brahman. The second great superiority of 
Christianity to Brahmanism consisted in its im- 
proved doctrine of the Way of Salvation. Chris- 
tianity conceived of sin as an ethical affair and as 
implying guilt which attached itself to the personal 
life of the sinner, and was indeed a manifestation of 
the character of that life ; and it conceived of salva- 
tion as a moral and spiritual redemption of that 
guilty personal life. But Brahmanism regards sin 
as only the opposite of merit, and salvation as a 



224 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

ceremonial affair which, when complete, effects the 
extinction of selfhood by absorption into Deity. 

Interesting, however, as was this exposition of the 
superiority, on grounds of reflective thinking, or as 
a matter of religious philosophy, of Christianity to 
the best of Brahmanical doctrine, from one who had 
left the latter to espouse the former, largely in view 
of the necessity for mental satisfaction ; the sight of 
the practical results attained by the missionary 
work at Ahmednagar among the common people and 
low-caste Brahmans was even more interesting. 
That it might all be seen in the short time of our 
stop in the city, Dr. Hume had prepared a written 
program to which we adhered quite strictly. 

On Sunday morning, after the conversation just 
narrated, visits were paid to the Sunday-schools of 
the two churches of the mission of the American 
Board. The school of the First Church had enrolled 
612 members ; it was supposed to be the largest na- 
tive school of this sort in all India. Nearly aU those 
enrolled are in attendance every Sunday; and there 
were all the signs of order, industry, attentiveness 
and genuine interest, which could be discovered in 
the best conducted of such gatherings in this coun- 
try. The enrollment of the Sunday-school of the 
Second Church which, as has already been said, is 
composed of low-caste Brahmans and is wholly self- 
supporting, was at that time 125 members. The 
communicants in the First Church numbered 378; 



An Oasis in the Desert 225 

the congregation was somewhat over 700, besides 
about 160 at the children's service. At 5 P. M. 
I spoke to an audience of more than 700, including 
a dozen or more Hindus — some of them Brahmans — 
on *'The Essentials of Christianity." Nowhere else 
in India did I see such a native Christian congrega- 
tion, or such evidences of vigorous native Christian 
life. 

On Monday morning we started out in good sea- 
son to inspect the school and other missionary in- 
stitutions of Ahmednagar. The Theological Sem- 
inary was first visited, where 21 bright and earnest 
young men were in training for the native ministry. 
We next went to the High School and then to the 
Industrial School, taking its three sections in the 
order of carpentry, copper-beating, and rug-weav- 
ing. In the first of these sections 20 boys were re- 
ceiving instruction in the making and repair of farm- 
implements and vehicles, and other of the common 
and universally demanded forms of native carpentry. 
In the next section 13 pupils were being taught one 
of the oldest and most distinctive of Indian arts, the 
art of beating copper into the forms of a great 
variety of useful and artistically decorated articles. 
But in the third section a large number, no fewer 
than one hundred in all — 60 boys and 40 girls — 
were receiving expert instruction in another of In- 
dia's oldest and most celebrated arts, — the art of 
rug-making. From the school we were conducted to 



226 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

the factory where 62 boys and 28 girls, graduates 
or advanced pupils in this art, were engaged in its 
practice. A Boston firm of dealers had contracted 
to take from this factory $100,000 worth of rugs 
annually, if so many could be made. (It should be 
said that since our visit, all these forms of industry 
have been greatly extended and others added, as 
important and integral parts of the missionary work 
at Ahmednagar.) 

The inspection of the industrial side of the train- 
ing given to the natives was followed by a return to 
the other sides of education. This included visits to 
the good-caste Hindu Girls' Day-School, where 54 
pupils of this class were being taught ; and later, to 
the low-caste Hindu Girls' Day-School, with its 65 
pupils ; to the Christian Girls' Boarding-School, 
which had at the time 157 boarding pupils and 118 
day pupils ; to the Bible Women's Training School, 
where 20 selected and mature native women were 
being trained as professional Bible-readers, so as to 
be fitted for access to Hindu Zenana women, espe- 
cially those of the higher caste; to the Normal 
School, which had 76 in its Normal Department and 
164 in its "model school," all of whom were being 
fitted to take charge of common-schools in the coun- 
try districts — a form of education hitherto most 
neglected but, perhaps, of all others most important 
for the economic, moral and religious welfare of the 
millions of India ; and, finally, to the Christian Boys' 



An Oasis m the Desert 227 

Dormitory, which was housing 90 native youths in 
different stages of a Christian education. Besides 
all this, there was to be seen — though, of course, only 
in the most cursory way — the Mission Dispensary, 
the Mission Book-Depot, where in 1899, besides 
those judiciously given away, there had been sold 
Rs. 1683 of Bibles and other Christian books; the 
Brahman Gentleman's House ; and the Chapin Home 
for Women, under whose roof 11 women and 7 or- 
phan and friendless children were being cared for 
and instructed. 

That Mrs. Ladd might see the Zenana work among 
high-caste Hindu women, a visit had been arranged 
for her to a private house where such work was go- 
ing on ; but, of course, to accompany her was totally 
tabued for any foreign man. I had my compensa- 
tion, however, in being shown with an unexampled 
freedom the entire establishment of a middle-caste 
Hindu gentleman. The thoroughness of inspection 
permitted on this visit may be appreciated when it is 
understood that all the rooms, including those where 
the food was prepared, and even his wife's bed- 
chamber, were thrown open. With much pride and 
perfect naivete the owner displayed his gods, then 
drew the sliding-door in front of a narrow closet, on 
a shelf in which sat a Brahman in the customary 
attitude though not in the very act of worship. My 
host then explained that this priest was employed by 
him to come to the house and pray every morning 



228 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

from seven to ten o'clock. He was then, after hav- 
ing worshipped the sacred fire, given his breakfast 
with the family. "Leave of absence" was then al- 
lowed until the evening, when he was under contract 
to return and go through the appropriate cere- 
monies. "Thus," said the master of the house, "I em- 
ploy and pay him to take entire charge of the religion 
of my family." The employee grinned acquiescently 
at this singular explanation in regard to the under- 
stood relations of the two. Whether the grin was 
discreditable, or otherwise, as compared to the feel- 
ing which the hired employee to do some one else's 
religion for him at a stipulated price and definitely 
fixed time would have expressed over an equally frank 
disclosure of the existing relations in this Christian 
land, I leave it to the reader to conjecture. 

A garden-party given to us by the native Chris- 
tians was appointed for five o'clock of the same 
afternoon. This had been entirely arranged by 
themselves and under the superintendence of no 
fewer than thirteen different committees. Perhaps, 
of all the things we saw at Ahmednagar to illustrate 
the benefits to India that might come from the trans- 
forming influences of a Christianity that took hold 
on all sides of human life, this, when one succeeded 
in reahzing its full significance, was the most con- 
vincing. The English magistrate and his wife, and 
a number of missionary ladies connected with the 
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, — includ- 



An Oasis m the Desert 229 

ing Miss Chubb, a graduate of Girton College, — 
were present as guests of the native Christians. The 
latter numbered nearly one thousand ; and taken to- 
gether, they seemed quite the most healthily happy 
gathering of natives which I saw in all India. Both 
boys and girls were playing native games, — the girls 
with all the modest freedom of movement and inno- 
cent joy in sport, which can characterize the Eng- 
lish and American games of a generation ago ; but 
which seem to be lacking to so much of what, in both 
these countries, is called "sport" in the present gen- 
eration, with its craving for high-strung sensuous 
excitement. One of the boys' games was played in 
a diagram marked out on the ground and much re- 
sembling in every way the game of hop-scotch. To- 
gether with their native games, the girls by them- 
selves played drop-the-handkerchief. During the 
festival we were once more crowned with garlands, 
as we had been the very first hour of our landing in 
Bombay by the native Christian young people there. 
At dinner that day we met all the missionaries of 
the American board, and a few from other mission- 
ary organizations. Soon after the break-up at ten 
o'clock we took the night train for Madras ; as far 
as the Junction at Dhond our accommodations were 
good, and we rested comfortably. But when, after 
a long wait at the Junction the train from Bombay 
arrived, we had our almost unfailing experience with 
the management of the government railways in India. 



230 Intimate Glimpses of Life vn India 

In spite of the fact of Dr. Hume's letter to the traffic 
manager, the guard claimed to know nothing of any 
reservation for us. He seemed inclined to pay no 
attention to providing the accommodations to which 
our tickets entitled us. But just as our insistence 
had won from him the oifer to find something for the 
lady in the car exclusively reserved for women, leav- 
ing me to sit upright for the night, a young fellow 
who had sprawled over an entire compartment (the 
guard knew it very well) offered to move into the 
compartment where an acquaintance of his was in 
like manner sumptuously provided. Thus accom- 
modated according to our rights, we slept so soundly 
that we were only awakened the next morning by a 
rapping on the car-door, which announced a friend 
sent forth to meet us, say "How d'ye do?" and bring 
us fine home-made gingersnaps for our cliota hazri. 

At the borders of the Madras Presidency we were 
forced to undergo a most thorough plague inspec- 
tion, which was repeated a half-dozen times more 
before we were discharged at the city station. Be- 
cause our tickets read from the Bombay Presidency, 
which was at that time very properly considered 
"infected" throughout, they were cut, and we were 
obliged to take out a "plague passport" which bound 
us under severe penalties to appear daily for te:^ 
days at the Municipal Office and get the proper offi- 
cer's certificate of continued health. 

There will be no better place than this to sum- 



An Oasis m the Desert 231 

marize briefly the impression received and deepened 
by every observation and experience regarding the 
work of rehgious reform in India. I have already 
said that the natives of India, including all the Hindu 
castes and Hindu races, are — we may say "by na- 
ture," since we know no other better way of express- 
ing so original and fundamentally mysterious a fact 
— more religious than are the Teutonic or the Latin 
races. But as constituted and developed at the 
present time, it is doubtful whether they have either 
the intellectual or the moral vigor necessary to raise 
the standard of their religious doctrine or of the 
conduct of the practical life of religion, without help 
from the outside. On the whole, one's estimate of 
the Indian native character, of the sound and effec- 
tive attainments of the more educated natives, of 
the validity and the value of the Hindu logic and the 
Hindu philosophy, and of the b^st outcome of the 
Hindu religion, as well as of the condition, socially, 
morally, and religiously of the multitudes, is apt to 
fall rather than rise with every week of added 
acquaintance with the facts. In my own case, I feel 
sure this experience has not been due to prejudice; 
for the initial impulses and expectations were quite 
in the other direction. I have been treated by the 
native leaders with quite unusual privileges, trusted 
more implicitly than it was fair to expect, and ac- 
corded distinguished courtesy. I have met many 
attractive and a few really noble native characters, 



232 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

who were not the product of imported Christian but, 
the rather, of intrinsic native influences. And yet, 
in general, I do not beheve that Hinduism, whether 
orthodox or reformed, whether popular or esoteric, 
can ever raise or purify the native life of India, or 
even supply it with the necessary leaders in this 
work of uplifting and of purification. Hinduism has 
not the true and life-giving thoughts about God and 
Man, and man's relations to God and to his fellows, 
which are required for so tremendous a task. It has 
not the courage of its convictions, or the intelligent 
devotion to ideals that are at the same time high 
and pure, and also economically and socially prac- 
ticable. 

But, in the second place, the present educational 
system in vogue in India, both in the Government 
and in the missionary schools and colleges, is by no 
means the most economically defensible or fruitful of 
results. That a considerable number of the officials 
of the British Government in India had come to 
realize this, has already been pointed out; unfortu- 
nately the same thing did not seem to be true of an 
equally large number of the teachers and other offi- 
cials in the missionary schools. To attempt to give 
the multitudes of the youth of any people an ad- 
vanced education, in a language, literature, and by 
methods and text-books quite foreign to them, must 
always result in much waste and failure. Of the 
diff*erent experiments in this sort of "benevolent 



An Oasis m the Desert 233 

assimilation," Japan in Korea has thus far best 
escaped this mistake ; but British India is still suffer- 
ing from it to no small degree. 

The attempt, then, so successfully begun at Ah- 
mednagar, and now so much farther advanced than 
it was at the time of our visit, to train the natives 
to lead the life which the multitudes of the converted 
must live, in decent, courageous, self-reliant indus- 
try, because of faith in God and love of God and of 
their fellows, is as choice a gift as Christianity can 
impart. For, consider the case of the multitudes of 
India in their attitude toward the foreign and im- 
parted religion of Christianity. "Rice Christians" 
by the hundreds of thousands of the lower orders of 
the native population can be gathered into the Chris- 
tian community, in any time of famine. But if you 
had the conscience to gather them, where would you 
find the rice to feed them? And of what real use 
would it be to count their heads for report in the 
home-missionary periodical, if these heads could not 
be counted upon in their own land to work them- 
selves free from the heathenish superstitions and 
filthy moral abominations of the popular Brahman- 
ism.? It is also quite possible to attract thousands 
of good-caste Hindus into your colleges, if you make 
the way into and through them easy, and are suc- 
cessful in getting the graduates into some coveted 
government position. But in four cases out of five, 
unless they, too, become in heart and life followers 



234 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

of the spirit that was in the "carpenter's son," it is 
better for your Christian college that these habus 
should not have its imfiprimatwr. 

And now consider the case of the much smaller 
number who are really, and more or less intelligently, 
dissatisfied with Hinduism, have lost faith in the 
Brahman, and are willing to defy him, break loose 
from Hinduism, and face the consequences of becom- 
ing, in heart and life and soul, followers of the re- 
ligion of Jesus? What shall be done with and for 
them? This is a serious question. They will be 
outcasted. What that means for the poor, no one 
can form a picture who has not seen the phenomenon 
near at hand. The convert cannot expect a morsel 
of bread, a word of comfort, a bit of help, from any 
of his former relatives and friends. If he is willing 
to work, no one will give him work, will even allow 
him to work. If he is a cook, he cannot cook for 
Hindus. If he is a blacksmith, he cannot shoe a 
Hindu's animal. If he is a wheelwright, he cannot 
mend the cart of a Hindu farmer. Life is incom- 
parably easy for the Jew who is cast out of the syna- 
gogue in this country — if, indeed, that thing is ever 
done to those who have means of self-support — com- 
pared with the Hindu who is outcasted in India. 
This, then, is where such Christian work of industrial 
education as was being done at Ahmednagar is 
needed throughout the entire continent on the grand- 
est scale, in behalf of the religious reform of India. 



An Oasis m the Desert 235 

When some man of what we count wealth in America 
gives several millions to found and carry to self- 
support a Christian industrial village in India, we 
shall have a model for the transforming influences 
of a practical Christianity operative on a continental 
scale. 

But India is being raised toward a Christian 
philosophy, a Christian morahty, a Christian civil- 
ization. Much of this process — perhaps most of it — 
is indirect and outside of the fold of baptized con- 
verts. There are many things in Indian character 
and Indian philosophy, and a few things even in 
Indian popular religion, that are helpful accessories, 
approachable sides, points of attachment, for the 
work of religious reform in India. Of all the obstacles 
to this most desirable result, however, so much bad 
example in the doings of so-called Christian nations 
is by far the greatest, most obstructive and difficult 
to overcome. 



CHAPTER XI 



MADRAS AND FORT GEORGE 



TXT" HEN we arrived on time at the city station of 
Madras, although it was only a little past six 
o'clock in the morning, we found Dr. Skinner, Acting 
President of the Christian College, waiting to wel- 
come us. We were at once captivated by the physi- 
cal aspects of this capital of Southern India; for, 
although it has not the imposing situation or stately 
collection of public buildings of Bombay, or the va- 
riety of educational, civil, and commercial interests 
of which Calcutta can boast, it has, much more than 
either of the other capitals, the charm of the tropics 
as we had already fallen in love with it in Colombo 
and Singapore. This first favorable impression was 
deepened when, in the afternoon of the same day, we 
took the drive along the beautiful red road (the 
Marina) extending from the Fort, over the Napier 
Bridge, past the Senate House, the Presidency Col- 
lege, and other public buildings, by a sea, the waters 
of which have that deep and brilliant blue that can- 
not be matched in temperate or northern zones. 
And, besides, much of the way the driveway is over- 

236 



Madras and Fort George 237 

hung by mighty banyan trees which form a veritable 
tunnel and furnish an agreeable coolness even under 
the tropical sun. 

Another class of physical phenomena, quite as 
interesting but not quite as agreeable, gave notice 
that night of our having arrived in a somewhat dif- 
ferent zone. For I was awakened out of a sound 
sleep by my bed shaking. My first thought was of 
a train of cars passing near by. But no train of 
cars could shake a house of this solid structure in 
this fashion ; for the bed was swaying in the "billowy" 
way which characterizes the most vicious kind of 
earthquakes. (It should be explained to those who 
have not been initiated to the same variety of ex- 
perience, that the shakings which the earth gives 
herself when she decides that it is time to ease the 
pressure by changing her levels underneath you, are 
seldom or never precisely alike.) Yes, it was a real 
live earthquake, and rather the most severe I have 
ever experienced, in spite of several decided shocks 
during my visits to Japan. One of the household, 
and he a man of science, when he heard the grinding 
of the walls in the tower where he slept, ran out into 
the verandah expecting the building to fall. The 
papers next day reported the earthquake as widely 
extended through that part of India. 

The ten days of quarantine, during which a daily 
visit to the health-office and an inspection by one of 
its doctors were prescribed, threatened to be some- 



238 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

thing more than a temporary nuisance. For the 
influenza which I had contracted on the cars from 
Benares was in the feverish stage, and made me so 
weak and miserable that during the period of quar- 
antine it was necessary to lounge or lie in bed all 
day, in order to get up for the afternoon lecture and 
the evening social function. But rarely good luck 
was in store for us in this regard. For the exam- 
ining surgeon was an Eurasian ; and after we had 
gone to him for two days, he said it was more fitting 
to our dignity that he should come to us. The 
medical member of the Faculty of the Christian Col- 
lege gave us two excellent pieces of advice, one social, 
the other physiological. The government doctor, 
said our wise friend, being an Eurasian, will on no 
account offer to shake hands with you. Do not you 
offer to shake hands with him. Then he will have 
no chance by feeling to detect that you have a fever. 
If now, he went on to say, "I give you some medicine, 
you will be well in two weeks ; if you do not take any 
medicine, you will be well in a fortnight." I re- 
frained from shaking hands with the Eurasian doc- 
tor and from receiving medicine from the European 
doctor ; — and in due time reaped the reward of both 
kinds of abstinence. 

The lectures in Madras were of a peculiar, and in 
some respects superior, interest to those given in 
either of the other Presidency cities. The average 
audiences numbered some four or five hundred, and 



Madras and Fort George 239 

consisted chiefly of graduates and older students of 
the different colleges, almost exclusively Hindus so 
far as the native part was concerned, but with a 
considerable number of Europeans who were almost 
without exception Christian. In his introduction 
Justice Shephard, then the chief magistrate of tliis 
Presidency, referred to the "curious connection" be- 
tween Madras and Yale, in that this University had 
derived its name and £800 of endowment from Elihu 
Yale, who, when he left the country after being Gov- 
ernor here, took away with him "a bag of diamonds." 

After the lecture, Dr. Miller, who had been for 
many years the successful and beloved President of 
the Christian College, rose, and in the fluent way 
which the natives so much enjoy, spoke some good 
words about the lecturer, and then went on to com- 
mend the goodness of Justice Shephard in the matter 
of arranging for the course. Then again the Jus- 
tice spoke, explaining that the course was virtually 
under University auspices, although it could not be 
given in the Senate House, since this building was 
now being got ready for an art exhibition. In his 
closino" sentences the Vice-Chancellor became some- 
what tangled up, and sat down leaving one of his 
periods in mid air, as it were. 

The colleges and schools and educational institu- 
tions generally of Madras are neither so numerous 
nor of so high average grade as are those of either 
Bombay or Calcutta. But they have some very inter- 



240 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

esting peculiarities. Perhaps the chief of these are 
due to the fact that there are almost no Muhamma- 
dans or Parsees to be found among their patrons or 
their pupils ; while the type of Hinduism prevalent 
and to be encountered in various practical ways, in 
Southern differs from that of Northern India. The 
Madras Christian College is, however, probably the 
best equipped and best managed of all the similar 
collegiate institutions in the country. Its collegiate 
department had at the time of our visit about five- 
hundred in attendance. The preparatory school had 
not yet been made up for the ensuing collegiate year, 
owing to the unfortunate fact that the proofs of 
some of the examination-papers had been stolen from 
the registrar's waste-basket into which he had care- 
lessly thrown them. The school, however, ordinarily 
numbers as many as one thousand. One of the most 
interesting facts connected with, the organization of 
this institution is this ; — namely, that almost all the 
boys in one of the hostels of the College come from 
a body of Syrian Christians, who form a community 
of fully 400,000 members on the Western Coast not 
far to the South of Goa. My informant thought 
that the time of their settlement in India was lost 
in antiquity; but they seem to have antedated the 
Portuguese Roman-Catholics by a long period of 
time. They have suffered much persecution in past 
years, especially by the Portuguese Catholics ; and 
some have become adherents of the faith of their 



Madras and Fort George 241 

persecutors. But the greater number still remain 
adherents of the Patriarch of Antioch ; though there 
is a difference of opinion which divides them into two 
sects. One sect holds that the Patriarch has the 
absolute right to the appointment over them of their 
clergy ; the other sect holds that he has only the 
right to confirm the choice of their congregations. 
These Syrian Christians are said to be a much more 
vigorous and reputable people than the converts of 
Portuguese Catholicism. As judged by their racial 
characteristics they are evidently the descendants of 
some body of Syrians, who migrated here and inter- 
married with the natives. 

Subsequently we paid a visit to the Northwick 
Girl's Boarding School, which was then under the 
auspices of the Free Church of Scotland. These 
girls were all Christians ; and their rather shy and 
dull demeanor, in contrast with the bright and "up- 
and-coming" manners of the Hindu girls whom we 
visited in the afternoon of the same day, disclosed 
plainly the fact that the former came from families 
of low origin and bucolic surroundings, and the lat- 
ter from good or high-caste Brahman families. 
This school is, however, doing excellent work in 
educating Christian teachers for the lower grade 
schools and wives for the Christian boys, — a very 
important and laudable species of manufacture. 

At the Chetty School for Hindu Girls we saw 
another exhibition of native jugglery and snake- 



242 Intimate Glimpses of Life vn India 

charming. Strange that both these exhibitions 
should be given for our entertainment by schools for 
girls ! But here were 300 bright black "tots," who 
seemed keenly to appreciate the tricks and the jokes 
of the juggler. The cobra produced from under the 
cloth was rather too lively to allow me, who sat well 
within his striking distance when it was allowed to 
creep to the edge of the table, to enjoy to the full 
the juggler's tricks ; I was not at all sorry when the 
venomous reptile was safely boxed up again ; though 
in general, I am not particularly afraid of snakes, 
but rather am pleased to watch their maneuverings 
and changes of temper. Of course, the jokes of the 
juggler could not be appreciated by the two foreign 
guests who were not at all acquainted with the lan- 
guage in which they were uttered. 

The foolish and degrading superstitions, the filthy 
and licentious and cruel practices, and the generally 
low intellectual and moral tone of the popular Hin- 
duism, are even more conspicuous and unmistakable 
in Southern than in Northern India. Probably the 
same thing is true of the inefficiency and untrust- 
worthiness of the natives in all manner of domestic, 
civil and commercial relations. In all these respects 
the testimony of the foreigners who had lived long- 
est with them and who were their most affectionate 
and sympathetic friends coincided with my own ob- 
servations. The reasons for this difference seem to 
be chiefly the following four: The mixture of races 



Madras and Fort George 243 

in the North, especially of the Indo-Aryan stock, is 
markedly superior to that of the South; something 
— it is impossible to say just how much — is due to 
the influences upon the physical organism and the 
habits of living, particularly as affecting the sexual 
relations, of the more distinctly tropical climate; 
the Muhammadan rule, in spite of all the corruption 
and criminal procedure of the diff'erent rulers of the 
Mogul Empire, was on the whole an improvement 
upon that of the native Hindu princes and of the 
Brahmanical priests and courtiers ; and the foreign 
governmental and religious influences, especially 
those flowing from the British East India Company 
and Portuguese Roman Catholicism, in the earlier 
days, tended to provoke and exploit rather than to 
improve and restrain some of the worst of the native 
characteristics, both public and private. 

One who had come from Japan so recently could 
not be long in Southern India without noticing the 
characteristic difference in the temper of the two peo- 
ples as evinced by the differences in the very sounds 
which filled the air. In Tokyo we had lived for six 
weeks just over the fence from a large public-school; 
in Madras our bedroom and dressing-rooms were 
just across the narrowest lane from two sides of 
the school-rooms of one of the colleges. In Japan 
not a cross or disagreeable noise came from the 
building or the playground of the school to our ears 
during our entire stay. The songs and pleasant 



244 Intimate Glimpses of Life i/n India 

cries of the children at play, the low and cheerful 
words of instruction and command from the teachers, 
were the only sounds which were to be heard from 
the compound of the school. Even the crows in the 
grove farther away seemed to be only gently ex- 
postulating with us for occasionally appearing on a 
landscape which they had come to consider pecu- 
liarly their own. But from the playground of the 
school in Madras came only high-pitched, shrill- 
voiced noises, usually of wrangling and quarrelling, 
though the disputants never came to blows. Scarcely 
an hour of the day passed when our ears were not 
disturbed with the noises of some row going on in 
the school-room itself between the boys and their 
native teachers. Looking through the blinds to see 
what could be the matter, one would behold the 
pedagogue gesticulating and orating against idle- 
ness, or insolence, and hear him threatening all sorts 
of punishment, none of which seemed ever to be ap- 
phed. One would hear the pupil "sassing back," 
and see the other pupils grinning at the sport, occa- 
sionally taking part themselves in the game of verbal 
bluster, — of course, usually on the boy's side. And 
anon, another order of noises arises from the lane 
below the window. This time it is a man and an old 
woman who are abusing and threatening each other, 
with a small crowd of idlers looking on. But it all 
ends in gabble. Even the crows have the most 
exasperating of caws, and they are ceaselessly at it. 



Madras and Fort George 245 

They are certainly the originals of the species corvus 
vrnpudens. I have seen them come down upon the 
maiden who was carrying around the plate of cakes 
at afternoon tea and carry off a piece as plunder. 
One must guard one's skull from a possible fracture 
in this way, who takes a meal in the open air. 

But when we are told of the two Brahman police- 
men who tried to extort Rs. 5 from a set of money- 
lenders, more than thirty in number, and failing in 
their first efforts, invoking the name of the law 
broke into their club-house and placed cards and 
other gambling implements in hiding, that they might 
subsequently discover them, we are not entitled to be 
quite so much amazed at such heathenish dishonesty 
as we should be if somewhat similar occurrences had 
not been known to take place in our own Christian 
cities. The dhohee or low-caste Hindu who does 
your washing, will let out your evening dress to an 
Eurasian man or woman to be married in ; the driver 
of your carriage when you go shopping expects his 
fee from the shop-keeper for bringing him a cus- 
tomer; if you want approximately pure milk, you 
must have the cow milked in the sight of a trust- 
worthy witness, and even then the milker may be 
practicing adulteration by having a bottle literally 
"up his sleeve," from which a concealed rubber tube 
makes connection with the pail; your cook will kill 
your own chickens and charge you the full market- 
price for them on his bill; and various other similar 



246 Inti/mate Glimpses of Life in India 

annoyances will afflict your life in Southern India. 
But all these things have their parallels in America ; 
and after all, Southern India is a most delightful 
place to live in, if only one has the income for a 
good style of upkeep in foreign fashion and can flee 
to the hills in the worst of the tropical heat. 

The annoyances of which a few selected specimens 
have just been rehearsed are trivialities. Not such 
are some other abominations with which the British 
Government does not venture actively to interfere. 
While in Madras I received a visit from delegates of 
the Hindu Reform Association of Travancore. This 
Association was then moving for the abolition of 
child-marriages; for the re-marriage of widows in 
order that these unfortunate women might be saved 
from compulsory prostitution ; and for the increased 
purity and temperance of the young men. But in 
Travancore the Brahmans, now as ever, are so much 
in the ascendency that the Maharaja himself is com^ 
pelled to be annually weighed in a scale against an 
equal weight of coin (it used to be gold, but it is 
now a mixture of silver and copper), and the entire 
sum distributed to the Brahmans as a bribe to pre- 
vent their intriguing against his rtile. Only the oldest 
son of a Brahman family marries ; the younger sons 
consort with the girls of the warrior caste; and in 
Travancore the warrior caste has no legal marriage 
whatever. My informants considered the British 
Government needlessly conservative and timid about 
reform, fearing, apparently, the disturbance of their 



Madras and Fort George 247 

revenues by any sort of agitation. They instanced, 
in proof, the case where, when the native ruler and 
his Ministers were ready to change the law which 
disinherited all Christians, the Government under 
the influence of the Travancore Brahmans discour- 
aged all efforts at this reform. 

No one who has looked the facts in the face with 
an observing eye can place the slightest confidence 
in the attempts, current even with some writers upon 
the subject in this country, to explain away or to 
"spiritualize" the atrocious indecencies and gross 
licentiousness, not only permitted but prescribed and 
actually practiced by the Hindu worship in Southern 
India. The doings at many of the festivals, the 
prevalent decorations of the temple walls and of the 
cars used in the religious processions, and many 
other evidences, are in plain contradiction of the 
more tolerant view. To quote again from an author- 
ity on the religions of India (Prof. E. W. Hopkins) 
when speaking of the "esoteric side" of the sectarian 
religions : "Obscenity is the soul of this cult. Bes- 
tiality equalled only by the orgies of the Indie sav- 
ages among the hill-tribes is the form of this religion. 
.... A description of the different rites would be 
to re-duplicate an account of indecencies, of which 
the least vile is too esoteric to sketch faithfully." 
Extermination, root and branch, by the criminal law 
is the only sound policy in dealing with such pretence 
of "freedom of religious worship." 

It was pertinent to this state of tilings, as well as 



248 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

a significant revelation of them, that while we were 
in Madras a discussion was going on in the news- 
papers as to the right of the Government, not only 
to proscribe, but also to prescribe, text-books for 
instruction in the schools and colleges of the Presi- 
dency. On looking up the matter I came upon the 
following extract from the civil and penal code. It 
dealt with an exception to the general law and ran 
about as follows: "Except that the law shall not 
apply to indecent and obscene representations of 
sacred personages." Now, undoubtedly, it may be 
claimed that certain models of Greek art and stories 
of the Greek gods, and even certain passages of the 
Old Testament, would seem to need a similar excep- 
tion in their favor. Let us grant this, but without 
expressing an opinion as to whether such exceptions 
ought to be made, or not. The admission would not 
on the whole destroy the truth that no other mix- 
ture of nastiness with religion, which is apt to meet 
in any way the eyes of the observing traveller as he 
journeys round the world, is on the whole quite so 
disturbing and repulsive as that sure to be met with 
in the popular and traditional worship of Hinduism 
in Southern India. 

One cannot see intelligently the City of Madras, 
not to say understand with some thoroughness its 
present condition and history in the past, without 
knowing something more than a hurried visit can 
bestow about the celebrated fortress called after the 



Madras and Fort George 249 

name of the patron saint of those who built and 
defended it, "Fort St. George." We were particu- 
larly fortunate in receiving an invitation to break- 
fast from the chaplain at the Fort at that time, the 
Rev. Mr. Penny. After breakfast it was planned 
that we should inspect the place and learn something 
of its history and of the most notable of the men 
who have been in the past connected with it, from 
Mrs. Penny who has since added to her other pub- 
lished works a history of Fort George that is the 
standard authority on the subject. 

The founding of a fort, which it is supposed was 
called "Fort George" for the reason, in addition to 
the appropriateness 'of the name as applied to any 
similar construction by the British, because it was 
completed on St. George's day (April 23) was 
nearly contemporaneous with the founding of Mad- 
ras. From the beginning, the Fort and the City, and 
indeed the entire Presidency, have gone through 
similar vicissitudes. The whole enterprise dates from 
1640 when Francis Day, chief of the East India 
Company's settlement, obtained a grant of land for 
the present site of the city from a native ruler. The 
condition and policy of the Company, its relations 
to the Rulers of the Mogul Empire, and the dangers 
which constantly threatened both these foundations, 
are all told in such an amusing and vivid way by the 
Italian adventurer, Manucci, the so-called "Pepys 
of Mogul India," that it is well worth while to quote 



250 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

a somewhat lengthy passage from his narrative de- 
scriptive of a somewhat later time. In January, 1701, 
the Mogul General Da-ud Khan had been sent to the 
Province of the Karnatik by Aurangzeb, to look after 
the interests of the Empire. He had encamped in 
front of the great fortress of Arkat, "an ancient 
strong place of the Hindu kings." The Mogul Gen- 
eral, says Manucci, was in "the greatest imaginable 
fury and passion," because the presents which the 
English had sent him were so insignificant in compari- 
son with his importance ; and he was threatening at 
once to despatch an armed force against Madras and 
Fort George, and then to follow it up by going in 
person with a large army. Thus would he let the 
English know that he was a person of much more 
importance than they had reckoned him to be. 

Manucci was much distressed, for he was friendly 
to all Europeans and also on good terms with Da-ud 
Khan; besides, he foresaw that his own interest 
would be seriously imperiled by the spreading of such 
a strife over that entire region. He therefore paid 
the Mogul General a friendly visit, bearing — as the 
custom is even to this day throughout the Orient — 
presents in his hand. Manucci confesses that he did 
not lead the conversation to the point desired, until 
he had made it "easy" by putting his interlocutor 
into "high spirits" by getting him to drink — fol- 
lower of Muhammad though he was — "copiously of 
the European wines that I had brought for him." 



Madras and Fort George 251 

But now let the wily Italian Christian tell in his 
own words how he for the time circumvented the 
plans of the wily Muhammadan man of war. Ma- 
nucci opened his plea with the subject which was 
really of most importance to both parties. "As con- 
cerned the revenues,'* says he, "I pointed out to him 
that when the English came and occupied Madras it 
was nothing but one vast plain full of sand, un- 
inhabited and without any name or fame in India. 
On the other hand, it should be remembered that it 
was now highly populous, full of active merchants 
and other residents. It was the money of the Eng- 
lish and their good government that had created all 
that prosperity, coupled with the justice they ad- 
ministered to everybody without fear or favor. If 
he intended to act with so much harshness and in- 
justice, all the nations of Europe would abandon 
India. He must recollect the income and benefits 
which Aurangzeb had acquired; for from what 
entered and left Madras alone, he collected more 
than one-hundred thousand patacas (equal to about 
$70,000 in gold at the present time). In addition, 
there were many merchants, weavers, cloth-printers 
and others, for all of whom the English provided a 
livelihood." 

After summing-up the much larger sums which 
were earned by the subjects of Aurangzeb through 
the mercantile and manufacturing enterprises of the 
English, Manucci goes on to urge Da-ud Khan to 



252 Intvmate Glimpses of Life in India 

remember that "the whole of this remained in the 
country, and in exchange for this the English car- 
ried off to Europe no more than some cotton-cloth. 
Let him reflect that if he objected to the residence 
of the English in Madras, and if he bothered his 
head about their gaining such considerable sums, it 
was requisite for Aurangzeb and his subjects to give 
them time to withdraw to Europe. They (the Eng- 
lish) set little store by the place; yet if they were 
forced to abandon it, they would also give up the 
other towns and factories they held in the Indies. 
In that case they would cease to be friends and be- 
come enemies. Upon their departure they would 
without fail seize every ship they came across, and 
thereby spread ruin and desolation throughout the 
Mogul Empire." 

The Mogul General yielded to the entreaties of 
Manucci, who afterwards chronicles his visit to Fort 
George, and the compliments and civilities between 
him and the English Governor, Mr. Pitt. After be- 
ing saluted with guns, whose salvos at first terrified 
him, dined and wined, and enriched with more val- 
uable presents, some of which were of his own choos- 
ing, Da-ud Khan went back to his own camp in 
better humor. But this reconciliation lasted only a 
brief time ; for in 1702 the Mogul blockaded the town 
for several weeks, but retired without capturing it. 
Forty years later, however, it was bombarded and 
captured by the French ; was restored to the Eng- 



Madras and Fort George 253 

lish by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ; was invested 
again by the French but relieved by the timely ar- 
rival of the English fleet ; was threatened by Hyder 
Ali's horsemen in 1780 ; but since then Fort George 
has remained in English hands free from external 
attack. 

We spent our first hour and more in the Church 
of the Fort, which was built in 1680 and is there- 
fore the oldest building used by the Church of Eng- 
land in all India, It is well kept up and is in most 
excellent condition. The chunam work here is all 
of ground shell beautifully polished. The gallery, 
where the Governor and his Council used to sit in 
state, but where now the prisoners of the Fort-prison 
are seated when they attend service under guard, is 
supported on beautifully carved wooden pillars ; its 
railing is also of the same carved wood-work. The 
carving follows Hindu patterns, such as one fa- 
miliar with the Hindu temples would quickly recog- 
nize. But the posts of the railing are a curious mix- 
ture of Hindu and Christian symbolic figures. They 
are quadrangular in shape; at the base are two 
carved elephants whose trunks are elongated and 
turned upwards, with carved birds on top, and the 
whole crowned with cherubs. All this work is beau- 
tifully done. 

A large picture of the last-supper, which was for- 
merly placed back of the altar, is now hung on the 
wall over the front arch of the sanctuary. The 



254 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

story has been spread abroad that this picture is 
"loot" from the Portuguese Cathedral at Pon- 
dicherry. But our host assured us that this could 
not be; since the picture is catalogued among the 
treasures of the Church at Fort George, before 
Pondicherry was taken. On the side-walls and col- 
umns of the Church are memorials to a number of 
men celebrated in Anglo-Indian history. Some of 
this work is in marble sculptured by such artists as 
Bacon and Flaxman, in their finest style. For in 
the gallery of this Church have sat at public worship 
several of the most celebrated men in the history of 
the British Empire ; — among them Wellington, Clive, 
Cornwallis, and other much respected and beloved, 
though not so widely known men, like Munro and 
Hobart, who have acted as Governors of Madras. 
Among the memorial tablets is one to the missionary 
Schwartz ; it was erected by the East India Com- 
pany, because of his distinguished services in pro- 
curing and keeping peaceful relations with the native 
princes. The Raja of Mysore so trusted and loved 
this good missionary that at his death he placed his 
son under the tutorial care of the good Christian 
Schwarz. 

Twice the Church of Fort St. George has been 
used as a granary and horses stabled in it in times 
of siege by the French. Once a portion of its rear 
tower was knocked down by a cannon ball. Its roof, 
however, was built so as to be for that day bomb- 



Madras and Fort George 255 

proof. Outside are the tomI>stones of some of the 
more notable men of the Presidency, — merchants and 
others; and among them are the names of several 
famihes such as Fleetwood, Morse, Titus Gates 
(nephew of the more celebrated man by that name) 
who were obnoxious to the Government of Charles II, 
and who were therefore sent as a good riddance to 
India for positions there. 

On returning to the house we were shown the 
Church plate, one piece of which, the salver to re- 
ceive the offerings, was the gift of Governor Elihu 
Yale. The proofs of Mrs. Penny's forthcoming 
book were also kindly offered for our inspection ; as 
well as, also, such of the records on the foundation 
of which the book was written as I cared to see. 
Among these was the notice of Yale's marriage to 
the widow Hinmers, or Hynmers, whose husband had 
died the May before. This notice was as follows : 

Elihu Yale and Catherine Hinmers, re- 
lict of Joseph Hinmers, were married by 
the Rev*^ Mr. Rich^ Portman minister, 
given in marriage by the Right Worship- 
full Stringham Masters Esq^, Gov" Henry 
Oxe" den & John Wilcox Bridemen, Cath- 
erine Barker & Tryphena Ord Brides- 
maids. 

Almost precisely the same date (1686) Manucci 
married a Roman-Catholic widow who was the daugh- 



256 Intimate Glimpses of Life m India 

ter of an English magistrate named Christopher 
Hartley, by a Spanish woman. In his diary he is 
careful to state that she was "legitimate," and how 
much he mourned her loss when she died just twenty 
year's later. During most of this period Manucci 
lived at Madras, "or Fort George'^ — the two titles 
being deemed identical — and practiced ceremonial 
"blood-letting" and other forms of the medical art, 
to his own great profit and with distinguished suc- 
cess. He has left a curious account of this "royal 
blood-letting," how it was done, and what happened 
to him on such occasions. "Ordinarily the princes 
and princesses have themselves bled twice in the 
Month of March, and the interval between the two 
bleedings does not exceed twenty-four hours. The 
operation is begun half an hour before the setting of 
the sun. Three days afterward they take a purge; 
but if necessity demands a shorter interval they do 
not wait the three days, but are governed by the re- 
quirements of the case. In the month of September 
the same procedure is repeated." The same quaint 
chronicler has left us much information as to the in- 
trigues and quarrels between the Hindu Brahmans. 
and the "Roman Brahmans," as the Portuguese 
priests found it expedient to call themselves ; as to 
the struggles of the British East India Company 
with the Mogul officials, the French, and the Portu- 
guese; and as to other strange occurrences and ad- 
ventures within and around the city of Madras and 
the Fort St. George. 



Madras and Fort George 



257 



We further paid our respects to the memory of 
"Old Eli" by visiting the tomb of his infant son. 
It stands back of the Law School building and is 
of very curious structure. The tablets, or rather 
inscriptions, are cut in the stone face of either 
side of an archway which runs through under the 
monument. On one side is the memorial in old 
English to a Mr. Hinmers, Madame Yale's first hus- 
band ; on the other side the memorial to the Gov- 
ernor's infant son. 




The places and institutions connected with the 
history of French and Portuguese Catholicism in 
Madras are scarcely, if at all, less interesting than 
those of the English occupation. Recognizing this, 
we were driven one day after tea to the Church of 



258 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

Saint Thome, where the priest acting as prior in the 
absence of his superior showed us every courtesy. 
In the center of the new cathedral some ten or 
twelve feet below the pavement is the gi-ave of Saint 
Thomas, the patron saint of the cathedral and, in- 
deed, of all this movement of Roman Catholicism in 
Southern India. The prior then ordered the sacris- 
tan to show us the vestments of the bishop, — a Por- 
tuguese ecclesiastic, under whom is the cathedral and 
its parish, but who is not subject to the archbishop 
of Madras. Some of these vestments were em- 
broidered in Madras, and others — as I understood 
the priest — "at home,'^ that is, in Portugal. The 
relics were carefully wrapped in parchment, or 
paper, and inscribed with the names of St. Thomas, 
St. Francis Xavier, St. Elisabeth, and a number of 
martyrs. They had been authenticated and sealed 
by some old-time bishop' and were enclosed under 
glass in a silver-gilt reliquary. But the padre did 
not know what the relics were, or when they were 
sealed up, or anything about their liistory. 

I took advantage of a holiday to visit in the com- 
panionship of one of the foreign teachers most 
learned in such subjects, St. Thomas Mount, other- 
wise known as the Great Mount. In one place 
Manucci speaks of his "house at the Big Mount." 
This hill is some seven miles from the Fort, but at 
its base is the cantonment which used to be the head- 



Madras and Fort George 259 

quarters of the Madras Artillery. The Mount is a 
knoll of greenstone and syenite about 300 feet high, 
crowned by a very old Armenian Church. We went 
by cars to the station, but there procured a funny 
little bandy into which one crawled through a door 
in the rear, and then sat half-curled up ; and in this 
way reached the foot of the Mount. From the rail- 
way on the left we had seen Little St. Thomas, and a 
fine long stone bridge, over which pilgrims used to 
pass in great numbers, on the way to visit this sacred 
place. The bridge was built by Armenian merchants 
when they were numerous and wealthy in Madras and 
vicinity. 

The ascent to the Church on the top of the Great 
Mount is by a flight of one-hundred and twenty-one 
stone steps. Near the foot of this lofty stairway 
are inserted into the pavement two tombstones, one 
of which bears the date of 1604 and the uncommonly 
unconventional but frank and suggestive statement 
in Latin that the person beneath was -filia prima legi- 
tima of her father, but filia naturalis of another and 
more advanced number. 

On the top of the Mount are the remains of a 
fortification, with embrasures used for guns and 
three cannon used for signals ; besides, there is a 
building once used as a flag-station from which the 
mail steamer approaching the harbor used to be sig- 
nalled. Here also are the ancient church and a 
building inhabited by priests. The church was built. 



260 Intimate Glvmpses of Life in India 

according to the sacristan in 1544, partly at the 
side of, and partly around, a yet more ancient 
structure of small stone and chunam work, the date 
of the erection of which is lost in antiquity. This 
more ancient part of the structure is used both as 
a sort of vestry and as a storeroom. From the small 
alcove in the tiny dark room — so we were assured — 
was taken a stone carving of a cross and a dove, 
which my learned companion identified as similar to 
others that go back to the 7th century A.D. The 
alcove is now occupied by American lamps and cans 
of kerosene. Extremely curious paintings in oil rep- 
resenting the twelve apostles hang high up on the 
walls of this ancient church; and just in front of 
the altar is a painting of the madonna and child 
which the sacristan boldly attributed to St. Luke ! 
What food for reflection is there not for us in the 
facts that centuries before Christianity was taken 
to our heathenish and barbarian ancestors, the now 
despised priests of Portugal and the cruelly afflicted 
and harrowed Armenians had spread their form of 
Christian truth and ritual widely over all of Southern 
India ? 

Wishing to remove the suspicions which I learned 
that the Roman-Catholic Archbishop Colghan, quite 
unlike the Jesuit Fathers in Bombay, entertained 
toward me and my work, I called upon him that we 
might be better acquainted with each other's views. 
The Archbishop had at that time been in Madras 



Madras and Fort George 261 

for fifty-six years, returning only twice in all that 
time to the home-land. He came down at once into 
the reception-room on my card being sent up. He 
was at first rather coolly quizzical and skeptical as 
to my intentions with "the heathen," or as to the 
possibility of my making any impression upon them. 
But when I explained my purpose as connected with 
the hope of doing something to resist the incoming 
tide of agnosticism and atheism among the present 
generation of habus, and said that I considered this 
a worse condition in its relation to Christianity than 
their Hinduism, he agreed with me. In the course of 
our conversation the Archbishop quoted the saying 
not long since of Lady DufF, who had declared that 
soon aU India would become either Catholic or ag- 
nostic. I did not dispute the statement, though I 
could not agree with it. When we parted, the atti- 
tude of the Archbishop had become entirely cordial, 
and he gave me his official blessing. 

We were also particularly favored with a chance 
to see other interesting things of a quite different 
order, by an invitation from Dr. Thurston, the cus- 
todian of the Madras Museum, which is perhaps the 
most interesting in all India, to take breakfast with 
him and then under his guidance see the things most 
worth seeing in the collections under his charge. The 
things which are most interesting are the oldest 
authentic relics of Buddhism. In this museum are 
the celebrated marbles which were taken from an 



262 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

exceedingly old Buddhist place on the river Krishna, 
but which bear plain marks of Greek influence, and, 
it is not unlikely, were done under the supervision and 
according to the plans of some Greek artist. Here 
also is the oldest authenticated relic of any sort in 
all the world. It consists of three tiny chips of bone, 
enclosed in a small casket of beryl with a gold- 
capped stopper, and a rim of beaten gold to seal it 
on. We do not know that these are bits of Buddha's 
bones ; but we do' know that they were considered 
such as early as the date of King Asoka, 240 B.C. 
For the whole relic as enclosed in its box of beryl 
was taken from the center of a large and hitherto 
undisturbed stone casket bearing authentic inscrip- 
tions of that date. The Buddhist priests of Burmah 
or of Kandy, Ceylon, said Mr. Thurston, would give 
thousands of rupees to any thief who would steal 
that relic and convey it to them. And there are 
thousands of thieves in Southern India who would 
wilhngly undertake the job if they could do so with 
any hope of success. But the incomparable treasure 
is closely watched. 

Among the other interesting objects in the Mu- 
seum at Madras are many old brasses taken from 
temples and elsewhere, and illustrating the earlier 
art-work of Buddhism, — especially an elaborate 
candelabrum with a very spirited figure of a dancing 
Siva in bronze. Of another order is the wooden cage 
in which Captain Arbuthnot was confined for seven 



Madras and Fort George 263 

months during the Chinese war of 1840-42. A 
melancholy interest attached to the skin of a cobra 
kept in a large jar of alcohol, because its former 
occupant had fifteen years ago killed Dr. Thurston's 
cook, who stepped on the snake as he entered the 
cook-house in the dark. 

Dr. Thurston had the same story to tell of the 
untrustworthy character of not only his house- 
servants, but also of his assistants in the Museum ; 
and also of the impossibility, except in rare instances, 
of training this untrustworthiness out of them. And, 
indeed, it only disappears when a quite radical 
change is effected in the underlying motives and 
views of life, by the introduction in the center of 
the personal life of religious convictions and princi- 
ples. How shall a man be much better at heart than 
the god he worships, however he may be restrained 
by conventional and legal considerations? But we 
have probably already said enough upon this im- 
portant point. 

During our entire stay in Madras we were enter- 
tained with that delightful hospitality which, without 
fuss or formality, makes one feel thoroughly welcome 
and at home. We were all the time meeting with 
incidents and with persons to throw side-hghts on the 
character of the life led in Southern India by the 
cultivated and the ignorant, by the rich and the poor, 
of both the native and the foreign population. At 
a dinner given by Justice Shephard, whose house was 



264 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

situated about a mile beyond the cathedral of St. 
Thome and had for its nearest neighbor our widely 
known theosophist countryman, Col. Olcott, we met 
a score or more of ladies and gentlemen belonging 
to the official class. The menu here had for the 
dessert a very unusual stimulant. For after the 
ladies had retired to the drawing-room and the 
men were about finishing smoking and talking around 
the table, our host, addressing the custodian of the 
Museum who was an authority on the subject said: 
"Thurston, step out here and see what kind of a 
snake this is which my boys killed on the compound 
near the house this afternoon." We all went through 
the doors that opened upon a brick-paved verandah 
only a step or two above the level of the ground, 
and there stood three turbaned men holding up by 
three strings — one at the middle, one at the tail, 
and one at the head — a reptile of very respectable 
size and length. "It is a tic-polonga, or Russel's 
viper," said this authority on snakes, the moment 
he set eyes upon it. Now I had learned at the 
"zoo" in Madras, where one of the most famous 
collections of poisonous snakes is on exhibition, that 
the tic-polonga is rather more to be shunned and 
dreaded than is his rival, the cobra. For the boy, 
who was anxious to increase his fees by exhibiting 
his skill in handling poisonous snakes, wanted more 
annas for entering the glass cage where were kept 
the largest of the tic-polongas, than for venturing 
among the cobras. He got his fee from us; but 



Madras and Fort George 9.Q5 

not for risking his life among either den of reptiles 
with deadly fangs and uncertain tempers. 

Another most interesting and improving dinner- 
party was the one at which I met ten or twelve of 
a Synod of English Wesleyan missionaries whose 
stations were in the country surrounding the city 
of Madras. One of these gentlemen told me the 
.story of his experiences in the native state of Mysore, 
which, after having been taken over by the English, 
was restored to the hereditary Raja, after he had 
been well educated under carefully selected English 
tutors. As a result, the state of Mysore was being 
exceedingly well governed. On the other hand, an- 
other missionary told of the Prince of Arcot, who 
is kept in or near Madras and away from his people ; 
but is being pensioned at the rate of Rs. 10,000 a 
month by the British Government. Several thousand 
of the Muhammadans belonging to the former retinue 
of this native prince were also being liberally pen- 
sioned. My informant regarded this as being, even 
if necessary, a monstrous evil and intolerable bur- 
den for the people of India, who have to support 
this system of pensioning Hindu and Muhammadan 
princes. All this confirmed my opinion that a pa- 
ternal native government, under supervision and by 
carefully trained and selected native officials, must 
be the best solution available for a long time to 
come, for such cases as the native states of India, 
for the Philippines, and for Korea. 

During the latter part of the stay in Madras we 



266 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Pittendrigh, in 
whose house Dr. Miller and Rev. Mr. Weston — both 
most agreeable and kindly companions — were living 
at the time. Their compound and its mansion were 
of a sort to be found only in the tropics where Euro- 
peans have settled for a long time, and so have 
learned how best to adapt their ideas of sanitary 
and comfortable living to the rigorous conditions 
imposed by climate, native customs, and the limita- 
tions coupled with the luxuriousness of available sup- 
pHes of service, i(> )d, furnishings, and other house- 
hold expenses. This was one of those very large 
old compounds, shaded with tropical foliage, and a 
commodious and solidly built old house (our room 
was fully forty feet in length) which in spite of the 
fact that you may occasionally find a scorpion in 
your shoe or a cobra on your front stairs, and always 
have to fight the destruction of all wood-work by the 
white ants, has no superior for contributing to the 
joy of just living and doing your modicum of the 
daily tasks. 

Besides the regular course of lectures at the Chris- 
tian College of Madras, but under the auspices of 
the Madras University, I gave a number of other 
conferences, talks, and public addresses, before dif- 
ferent kinds of audiences, — but all of them exhibiting 
in their attention and in their questions a high de- 
gree of intelligence and interest. Of these one of 
the very best was composed of one hundred mem- 



Madras and Fort George 267 

bers of the "Teachers' Guild," to whom I spoke on 
"American Universities." The magnificence of the 
sums expended in buildings and equipment in this 
country amazed my audience; but were I compelled 
to speak again on the same subject before the same 
audience, I fear that the obligations of truthfulness 
would require an even less favorable account of the 
net result in scholarship and character of all this 
vast expenditure. 

The day of the last lecture came, on the morrow of 
which we were to leave Madras and go still farther 
southward on our way back to Ceylon. The audience 
was larger and more enthusiastic than at any time 
before. After the lecture was finished, two natives 
— one a Christian-College man who was in the civil 
service, and the other a prominent Hindu barrister 
— moved and seconded a vote of thanks which was 
carried with much show of enthusiasm. But the 
most interesting and encouraging result of the work 
in Madras was the fact that both of these speakers, 
and the majority of the audience, seemed to com- 
prehend and sympathize with, in a truly astonishing 
way, what it had been the half-suppressed but deeper 
purpose of the lectures to accomplish. 

We left Madras on the last day of winter, with 
the thermometer standing every day well up around 
the nineties, and somewhat worn out with the entire 
winter's experiences. But we bade farewell with 
sincere regret to the group of friends who came to 



268 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

the station to see us off. We were to share the 
compartment with a Lutheran missionary and his 
wife, who were on their way to Colombo to take the 
steamer Oldenburg to return to the United States. 
And although I found my upper berth too narrow 
for a perfectl}'^ safe lodgement, I did not tumble out 
until we pulled into the station at Madura. 



CHAPTER XII 

MADURA AND SOUTHERN INDIA 

THE city of Madura, although it has neither the 
size nor the attractions of the three Presidency 
cities and is comparatively rarely visited by the 
foreign tourist, is nevertheless, when fairly judged by 
its history and its local interests, "no mean city." 
It was the capital of the old Pandyan dynasty, which 
continued its dynastic rule for a far longer period 
than is granted to most forms of government ; for it 
held sway over all this part of India from the 5th 
century B.C. to the end of the 11th century A.D. 
The last of the old Pandyan kings showed the vigor 
of his Hindu ancestors by exterminating the Jains 
and conquering the neighboring kingdom of Chola. 
But the power of the Mogul Empire was creeping or 
storming farther southward, and the king of Madura 
was himself overthrown by an invader from the 
North. After a INIoslem army had held the Hindus 
of the city and district in subjection for a period 
of years, the province passed again under Hindu 
rule. In the middle of the sixteenth century its 
governor, Viswanath, established the so-called Nayak 

269 



270 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

Dynasty, It was the greatest of this line whose 
military exploits are recorded in the correspondence 
of the Jesuit missionaries ; who adorned Madura with 
its temples and public buildings ; and who extended 
his empire widely over the adjoining districts. In 
1786 the District fell into the hands of the nawab 
of the Karnatik, and the line of the Nayaks was 
extinguished. Twenty years later the English took 
charge of Madura in the alleged trust for a Muham- 
madan prince. But he was the last independent 
native ruler of the Karnatik; for his son ceded his 
rights of sovereignty to the British East India 
Company in 1801. From the history of Madura 
learn in brief the history of all of Southern India. 

At the station we were met by Mr. Chandler who 
took us to the mission-compound of the American 
Board where we had breakfast and a brief rest. As 
soon as the fiercest midday heat had somewhat sub- 
sided, or rather as soon as the sun was not quite so 
much overhead and so able to execute its most direct 
and mortal strokes, we visited the schools in the com- 
pound, had tea, and then at five o'clock went to 
the church near by where a "welcome service," na- 
tive fashion, was to be held. This consisted of 
prayer , the singing of Tamil lyrics, the reading of a 
printed address in English by one of the native 
teachers, and the presentation of a palm-leaf manu- 
script in Tamil. This manuscript I at first took 
for an ancient treasure; but it was soon discovered 



Madura and Southern India 271 

to be a very modem affair. It had just been pre- 
pared in imitation of original antiques by some of 
the native caligraphists and contained the address 
of welcome, the Lord's Prayer, and a variety of other 
things. It was designed for deposit in the Yale 
University Library. After these welcome exercises 
I made a brief response. 

The Brahmans of good caste in Madura were the 
most conspicuously "liberal" in their intercourse with 
the missionaries and other Christians of good social 
standing, of any men of their class whom we meet 
during our travels in India. They had given gener- 
ously to a hospital wliich was conducted without 
interference from them under Christian auspices ; 
and they had co-operated cordially in a street- 
preaching campaign against intemperance. The 
Hindu Club which was formed chiefly by these Brah- 
man gentlemen invited us and our hosts — not omit- 
ting the ladies — to take afternoon tea on their 
grounds in the suburbs of the city, where we were 
politely served in the open air near the tennis- 
court. So faithful to their temperance principles 
are the gentlemen of the Hindu Club that they do not 
allow drink of any kind except tea to be served on its 
premises, — not even soda-water in bottles ; in order, 
as they explained, to avoid suspicion and even "the 
seeming of evil." Instead, everything in our enter- 
tainment was carried on in a fashion not to be 
distinguished from the most strictly Pharisaical of 



272 Intimate Glimpses of Life vn India 

Christian gatherings, — with one exception however. 
The Brahmans did not drink tea with us or serve even 
the ladies of our party by pouring and passing tea 
for them. To do this would have been to break 
caste. But if there are to be lines drawn in the 
name of religion between friends and social equals, 
of a ceremonial character, what fault can Christian 
sects find with these Brahman gentlemen .^^ One must 
draw the line somewhere ; if it is once for all granted 
that any line of this character is anywhere to be 
drawn. And to break the bread of social com- 
munion with those who' had no caste standing was to 
render oneself justly liable to excommunication. Yet, 
when on the following evening I spoke concerning 
"the Conception of God most in accord with Science 
and Philosophy" to an audience which crowded the 
hall of the Young Men's Christian Association, a 
native Hindu Judge presided, and these high-caste 
Brahmans were of the most intelligent and apprecia- 
tive of the audience. 

In the evening of this first day in Madura I told 
to the weekly gathering of the missionaries of the 
region at the house of our host my observations in 
Japan. For, as there has been occasion to remark 
before, all classes in India were then especially in- 
terested in the impressive spectacle of the rapid 
changes and advances in civilization afforded by this 
Far-Eastern nation, and in its probable influence as 
a stirring example for all the other Oriental peo- 
ples. 



Madura and Southern India 273 

The next morning we drove to Passumalia, stop- 
ping on the way to visit the palace of Timmala 
Najak and the mission-schools in that quarter of 
Madura. This palace seemed to us one of the most 
interesting sights of its kind in all Southern India. 
The prince who was its builder was one of the great- 
est rulers of the District of Madura, — "the greatest 
of all in modern times," he has been called — and 
his rule lasted gloriously for nearly forty years. 
The palace itself has been restored by the English 
so thoroughly that it is now one of the finest public 
buildings in all India. Some of its halls, when in 
their original perfection of finish and decoration 
must have been truly magnificent. What was the 
throne-room, a court under the Grand Dome, is 61 
feet in diameter and 73 feet high. There are four 
holes in the middle of the roof of the room, 54 feet 
high, which was Tirumala's bedchamber. I quote 
the legend that "Tirumala's cot was suspended from 
hooks fixed in the four holes, and that the large hole 
between the two holes on the southern side of the 
room was made by a thief who descended by the chain 
suspending that corner of the cot and stole the crown 
jewels. Tirumala is said to have offered an heredi- 
tary estate to the thief, if he would restore the 
jewels, adding that no questions would be asked. On 
recovering the jewels, he kept his word, but ordered 
the man to be decapitated !" The British now use 
the building as a palais de justice; but as their cus- 
tom too often is, they have shown an utter indiffer- 



274 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

ence to all aesthetical considerations by cutting off 
all the beautiful vistas on all sides of the court, and 
fencing off the offices with dirty and ragged screens 
set up between the pillars. It is no insignificant 
remnant of barbarism, or slight handicap of the most 
cordial relations, for the governing race to show 
this kind of indifference to the subtler feeling of the 
governed. 

At Passumalia we were shown over the different 
branches of a thoroughly well organized and highly 
successful missionary work; after which I spoke to 
the whole body of students and teachers, some 500 
in number, in their large hall. The singing was 
extremely interesting, especially a Tamil lyric with 
a violin accompaniment and the rhythm strongly 
marked by striking together a small pair of cymbals. 
The tempo seemed to me as strictly as possible seven 
equal notes to the measure, rather than a sequence 
of four and three. The effect was very peculiar 
and made one feel as though one must spring to one's 
feet and sway one's body and dance in truly heathen- 
ish fashion. It was easy to see how such music could 
work a multitude of singers into a kind of frenzy. 
And, indeed, we did see how such an effect was actu- 
ally attained when we witnessed an exhibition given 
on shipboard by a band of devil-dancers who were 
on their way to the Paris Exposition of 1900. 

At breakfast there was rather a warm discussion 
over the best way of educating the natives, during 



Madura and Southern India 27 5 

which it became apparent that Southern India is not 
afflicted to the same extent as Bengal with a super- 
fluity of babus. 

After returning to Madura in the almost intoler- 
able sunshine and taking a brief rest we visited the 
"Great Temple," the most beautiful portions of which 
as it now stands were built by this same Tirumala 
Nayak who built the great palace already described. 
This famous str\icture forms a parallelogram of 84<7 
feet by 729 feet, surrounded by nine gopuras. (py- 
ramidal towers) over the temple gateways and con- 
structed in the Dravidian style, of which the largest 
is 152 feet high. With its grounds this enormous 
temple covers thirteen acres and is exceedingly 
wealthy in revenue and resources. As being one of 
the finest of its type, and the only other ones ap- 
proaching it in size and — albeit somewhat tawdry — 
magnificence, not situated near enough our route to 
be visited, it merits a brief description. The entire 
Great Temple of Madura really consists of two parts, 
or temples, one on the East dedicated to Minakshiy 
"the fish-eyed goddess" who was one of the con- 
sorts of Shiva, and the other to the god Shiva 
himself, the member of the Hindu Trinity who rep- 
resents "the ascetic, dark, awful, bloody side" of the 
Hindu religion. The worship of the Shivaites here 
and elsewhere in India is always tending toward 
what is most beastly and cruel and lustful in the most 
degraded conceivable forms of religious cult. The 



276 Intimate Glvmpses of Life in India 

entrance to Minakshi's temple is by a gate and 
through a painted corridor about thirty feet long, 
which is called the Hall of the Eight Lakshmis, from 
eight statues of the goddess by that name, which form 
the supports of the roof on either side. This corri- 
dor is used freely as a bazaar by various sorts of 
traders and money-changers. The temple itself is a 
maze of corridors and rooms used for various pur- 
poses opening off from them, with rows of elaborately 
carved pillars on either side. Some of the capitals 
of the pillars are formed with a curved plantain- 
flower as a bracket, — a fashion which is found else- 
where in the Dravidian temple architecture. By 
some this is called "the Hindu cornucopia. '* One of 
these corridors is 166 feet long and runs up against 
a large door of brass that has stands to hold a multi- 
tude of lamps which at night furnish it with "a dim 
religious light." 

The number of bazaars in this temple is amazing 
and the revenue from them is, as we have already 
indicated, very large. One interesting trick for in- 
creasing this revenue in other ways than by the 
profits from the bazaars is to make public announce- 
ment that the goddess, to whom the temple is dedi- 
cated, will be taken out of her special room some 
night at eleven o'clock and conveyed to the bed- 
chamber of the god. A great crowd gathers and 
pays liberally to see the marriage ceremony. But 
something unpropitious, such as the sneezing of a 



Madura arid Southern India 277 

Brahman, occurs to prevent the completion of the 
ceremony; and so another paying festival of the 
sort can be proclaimed for the following year. 

At this temple some of the most degrading prac- 
tices of the popular Hinduism, such as the prostitu- 
tion of the Nautch girls and the seduction of women 
by the priests are still kept up pretty much as in the 
earlier times ; and there is the same lack of any sort 
of religious feeling which was to be noted under 
similar surroundings at Benares. In both these 
positive and negative ways the popular Hinduism 
in India is greatly inferior to the popular Buddhism 
in Japan. 

We had an amusing experience with the sacred 
elephants of the Great Temple of Madura. At first, 
one of them was introduced by his keeper as ready 
to perform for us in consideration of suitable back- 
shish; but he failed utterly to earn his money by 
doing any tricks, not even picking up the two-anna 
bit thrown down on the ground before him. But no 
sooner was it known that foreign sahibs, willing and 
able to pay well for such entertainment, were touring 
the temple — and the news of it seemed to diffuse itself 
everywhere almost instantaneously — when all the 
other elephants kept appearing athwart our path, 
and began without entering into any preliminary 
negotiations or efforts at a contract to show them- 
selves off. One of them, a huge she-elephant, was 
most amusing. She trumpeted, she danced, she 



278 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

hopped about on three legs, and all in fine style. She 
received her well-merited fee, which she promptly and 
dexterously picked up from the ground. 

Near the temple is a tank, almost as celebrated 
and elaborate in its way as is the temple itself. It 
is called the "Tank of the Golden Lilies." In the 
center of an island surrounded by the waters of 
the Great Tank stands a picturesque temple. There 
is a chamber in the tank built by the queen Mangam- 
mal, who according to tradition was seized and 
starved to death by her subjects about 1796 A.D. 
These cruel rebels, while starving, also tortured their 
queen by placing food so close to her that she could 
see and smell but was unable to reach it. A statue 
of her Brahman lover may be seen on the West side 
of the Tank ; and on the ceiling there is the portrait 
of the paramour opposite the portrait of his royal 
mistress. Two sides of the wall of this corridor are 
somewhat gaudily painted with representations of 
some of the most famous pagodas of India. On one 
side is a belfry with an American bell of good tone. 
Of the twelve pillars sculptured on the sides of the 
corridor, six represent a strange monster called Yalif 
the conventionahzed lion of the South of India. 

The most interesting feature of the Great Temple 
taken in its broadest expanse is the Hall of a Thou- 
sand Pillars. As a matter of fact, the number is 
said to count up only 997, many of which are hidden 
from view, since the intervals between them have 




a 

a 

a 

o 



Madura and Southern India 279 

been bricked up to form granaries for the pagoda. 
It is not, however, the number but the marvelously 
elaborate nature of the carvings which makes this 
Hall with its one thousand pillars so famous. Its 
builder, who was Minister of the Founder of the 
dynasty, is represented near the entrance seated like 
a skillful rider on a rearing horse. But perhaps the 
most noteworthy of all is the building called Tiru- 
mala's Choultrie, the New Gallery dedicated to the 
presiding deity of the place, who was fabled to pay 
the ruler a visit of ten days annually. This hall has 
four rows of pillars supporting a flat roof. Tiru- 
mala is distinguished by having a canopy over 
him ; and on his left is his wife, the Princess of Tan- 
jo re. 

This extravagance of size and riot of decoration 
in the use of mythical forms, animal and divine, are 
especially characteristic of the temples and pagodas 
of Southern India. To the student of anthropology, 
of comparative religion, and of the history of social 
evolution, Southern India offers some of his most 
complicated and difficult problems. The peoples and 
their family of languages, which are divided into 
not fewer than a dozen more or less closely related 
dialects of which Tamil and Telegu are spoken by 
the greatest number, are designated "Dravidian," a 
term derived from the Sanskrit. They are a dark- 
skinned race, and, so far as can be known with 
any assurance, they are the aborigines in the strictest 



S80 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

sense of the word, of all the southern part of the 
continent and extending over into the northern half 
of the island of Ceylon. The nearer we come to 
their aboriginal condition, the more isolated from all 
other peoples, in their physical characteristics, their 
customs, and their language, do the Dravidian peo- 
ples appear. But as the fair-skinned, more intelli- 
gent and highly developed Aryans extended their 
conquests and their superior type of living to the 
southward, they overruled but mixed with the dark- 
skinned and relatively wild and savage Dravidians. 
That happened which always happens ; the superior 
race modified but did not wholly destroy the charac- 
teristics of the inferior race. When Portuguese and 
French and Dutch and English were for two hundred 
years contending for supremacy in trade, in posses- 
sion of territory and influence over the native rulers, 
and even for success in the propagation of their 
favored forms of religion, the process of modifica- 
tion went on apace. It is going on at the present 
time. But it has never been complete. There are 
today tribes of naked savages living in trees, wor- 
shippers of the cobra who regard this snake as the 
ancestor of the tribe and look upon it as their totem, 
and appoint groves for its habitation, where it is 
fed at the public expense and has its established 
shrines, and practicers of all manner of strange 
and grossly heathenish customs, among the descend- 
ants of the original dwellers in "the medley of 



Madura and Southern India 281 

forest-clad ranges, terraced plateaus, and undulat- 
ing plains," which stretches across this part of India. 
But on this very account. Southern India has a 
certain fascination due to its weirdness and uncanny 
nature that is lacking to most of Northern India. 
Among the Dravidian peoples, the popular Hinduism, 
too, is of all places most bestial and grossly licen- 
tious, as has already been said. The same fact will 
be further put in evidence when we come to describe 
our brief visits in Ceylon, where devil-worship is an 
affliction into which the converts to Christianity even 
down to the third and fourth generations may not 
infrequently suffer a relapse. And yet that is true 
of the dark-skinned Dravidians, which is true of the 
dark-skinned races generally, the}^ are capable of de- 
veloping some very amiable traits and of receiving a 
good degree of intellectual and aesthetical develop- 
ment. 

On the morning of March 8d I made an address — 
the fifth within forty-eight hours — to the native pas- 
tors of Madura and the vicinity, and then we took 
the eleven o'clock train for Tuticorin. The heat 
was something frightful, the thermometer standing 
at above one hundred in the railway car. A visitor 
to Tuticorin in the sixteenth century mentions its 
fame as the center for pearl fisheries. At that time 
the fishers and divers were mostly native Christians. 
But because of the deepening of the channel these 
banks no longer produce pearl-oysters in remunera- 



282 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

tive quantities ; but "chank-shells'^ are still found 
here and exported to Bengal. 

The anchorage at Tuticorin is no less than five 
miles from the shore; but by paying what seemed 
rather an exorbitant fee for "embarkation," we 
reached the little steamer "Hindu" in fairly comfort- 
able fashion. It turned out, however, that there were 
only five cabins in the entire ship ; these were not 
nearly enough to accommodate the number of first- 
class passengers booked for this trip. The number 
of this class was much greater than usual, since a 
homeward-bound steamer was sailing the following 
day from Colombo. "The lady" was therefore sent 
to one of the cabins allotted to the somewhat mis- 
cellaneous crowd of her sex, and I was assigned to the 
same cabin with the Bishop of Madagascar. This 
right-reverend gentleman, however, while disclaiming 
all personal prejudice against me, insisted that he 
must have his secretary with him and wanted the 
captain to order me and my luggage moved out. To 
this I did not give a ready assent ; although I, too, 
had no personal prejudice against Portuguese or 
French or any other nationality of bishops. But 
the aff*air settled itself in the most amicable and 
satisfactory manner. For it was found that the 
berths were much to narrow to accommodate a per- 
son of such corporal, not to say ecclesiastical, pro- 
portions, as the Bishop of Madagascar; and so a 
tent was erected on the upper deck and within it 



Madura and Southern India 283 

cots set up for the Bishop and his secretary, while 
I was left sole occupant of a two-berth cabin; for 
it proved too late to call back my wife. 

The terrors of the passage on account of rough 
water were nought; but the discomforts of landing 
at Colombo were considerable. We were kept waiting 
so long by the quarantine doctor who, before he 
would release the first-cabin passengers, inspected in 
such a thoroughly leisurely way (I cannot say with 
how much medical thoroughness) the several hun- 
dred coolies on board the "Hindu," that the friend- 
ly host who had come out to meet us with a boat was 
obliged to go off without his guests. We hailed a 
sampan, however, and were fairly pitched into it with 
all of our luggage except one piece, a Gladstone 
bag. One of the coolies in another sampan had 
grabbed and made off with this, — a species of black- 
mail wliich an appeal to a police-man, when we had 
reached the jetty, prevented the rascal from making 
profitable. The customs-officer did not even ask us 
to open our trunks or bags ; thus before long we had 
secured a garry and a bullock-cart and were on 
our rather lengthy journey to the house of the mis- 
sionary where we had been entertained on our visit 
to Ceylon four months before. But since two mis- 
sionaries of his Board were occupying the accom- 
modations of the house until they could take Mon- 
day's steamer for England, and since the Galle Face 
Hotel was full, and far away, Mr. Tarrant, of the 



284 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

firm of forwarding and commission merchants, Tar- 
rant, Henderson & Co., who then lived at "Temple 
Trees," a bungalow near by, kindly offered to take 
us in for Sunday night. Our adventures that night 
and subsequently belong to the next and concluding 
chapter. 



CHAPTER XIII 

CEYLON AND HOMEWARD-BOUND 

T N geological formation, climate, social and re- 
"*• ligious customs and institutions, and in civil and 
political history, the Island of Ceylon is closely re- 
lated to Southern India. The aborigines, or at least 
the inhabitants for untold ages previous to authentic 
history, were probably the ancestors of a tribe of 
hunters who still inhabit some of the eastern jungles. 
The great Hindu epic, Ramai/ana, tells how its hero 
Rama conquered part of the island and took the 
capital of its king. It is doubtful, however, whether 
this boast of Hinduism represents the truth of his- 
tory. Buddhism, which still shares with the popular 
Hinduism and the most superstitious forms of devil- 
worship the allegiance of the lower orders of the 
people, was early and more permanently planted in 
Ceylon. Its conversion to Buddhism at the begin- 
ning of the third century is still marked by the mul- 
tiplication of the daghobas, or curious bell-shaped 
reliquaries of solid stone, and the monasteries, which 
meet the eye of the foreign tourist on every hand. 
After the expulsion of the religion of Sakya Muni 

285 



286 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

from India by the revived power of Hinduism, Ceylon 
became the principal seat of the southern and most 
degraded type of this great reformer's religion. It 
remains in this position to the present day; and this 
fact gives it a peculiar interest to the student of 
comparative religion. 

The Singhalese rulers of Ceylon and their fol- 
lowers, and the Tamil rulers of South India and their 
followers, fought and invaded each other's dominions 
back and forth through several centuries. The Por- 
tuguese, Dutch, and British trade-interests contended 
for economic supremacy there in scarcely less deter- 
mined and unscrupulous fashion. The Portuguese in 
Ceylon, as everywhere else, treated the native rulers 
in such overbearing and tyrannical fashion as to 
make themselves particularly obnoxious. When the 
island was conquered by the forces of the East India 
Company it was at first made a part of the Com- 
pany's south-Indian jurisdiction, and administered 
from Madras. But by a convention entered into 
with the Kandyan chiefs inMarch, 1815, the complete 
sovereignty of Ceylon passed into the hands of the 
British, who guaranteed the inhabitants civil and 
religious liberty, and who there, as everywhere, un- 
like the Portuguese and their modern imitators in the 
management of colonies, have been so wise and liberal 
in their administration that no serious disturbance 
of the public order has occurred since. 

The well-known missionary hymn says of "Ceylon's 



Ceylon and Homeward-Bound 287 

isle" that "every prospect pleases." But let us quote 
the more expansive and rhetorical description of Sir 
Edwin Arnold. "It is impossible," says Arnold, "to 
exaggerate the natural beauty of Ceylon. Belted 
with a double girdle of golden sands and waving 
palm-groves, the interior is one vast green garden 
of nature, deliciously disposed into plain and high- 
land, valley and peak, where almost everything 
grows known to the tropical world, under a sky 
glowing with an equitorial sun, yet tempered by the 
cool sea-winds. Colombo itself, outside the actual 
town, is a perfect labyrinth of shady bowers and 
flowery streams and lakes. For miles and miles you 
drive about under arbours of feathery bamboos, 
broad-leaved bread-fruit trees, talipot and areca 
palms, cocoa-nut groves, and stretches of rice-field, 
sugar-cane and cinnamon, amid which at night the 
fire-flies dart about in glittering clusters. The lowest 
hut is embosomed in palm-fronds and the bright 
crimson blossoms of the hibiscus ; while wherever 
intelligent cultivation aids the prolific force of na- 
ture, there is enough in the profusion of nutmegs and 
allspice, of the india-rubbers and cinchonas, of can- 
nas, dracsenas, crotons, and other wonders of the 
Singalese flora, to give an endless and delighted 
study to the lover of nature." 

It should be recalled at this point that this was 
the second of our visits to Ceylon ; and although on 
the first visit the preceding November no public ad- 



288 Intimate Glimpses of Life m India 

dresses had been arranged for, we had been on this 
very account much more at liberty to study some 
of the most interesting and conspicuous of the native 
characteristics and customs. We were also at that 
time particularly fortunate in our host, Mr. 
Moscrop, who had been for a long time in Ceylon, 
in a position to discover the secrets of the native 
superstitious beliefs and practices much more authen- 
tically than was possible for the average long-time 
resident among them. 

The missionary hymn already referred to passes 
quickly on from the recognition in the gross, so to 
say, of the pleasing aspects of this part of the world, 
to the declaration, "and only man is vile." I was 
surprised, then, to leam that fully one-third of the 
150,000 inhabitants of the City of Colombo are 
Christians, more than half of this number, about 
80,000 being Roman Catholics. But devil-worship 
is still very common and persistent all over Ceylon; 
not only among the aboriginal natives but also among 
the Tamils and Singhalese of the better classes, some 
of the latter relapsing into it even after they have 
become professing Christians. My host narrated in 
detail three instances among the larger number 
which had come under his personal observation. 

In one case a Christian girl, who was the daughter 
of a native pastor and whose grandfather even had 
been a Christian, at the end of about a year of 
married life became impressed with the belief that 



Ceylon and Homeward- Bound 289 

she was losing the affection of her husband. In- 
stead of seeking advice from her own pastor, she 
secretly consulted with a devil-priest and employed 
him to exorcise the evil spirit which was exert- 
ing this alienating influence. With great show of 
difficulty and of the expense of such shepherd- 
ing of his flock, the priest procured a skull 
which purported to be that of a first-born child 
also of a first-bom, for three or four generations 
back. This skull he ordered to be placed for several 
successive nights in the crotch of a "demon-tree," in 
order to propitiate the demon who inhabited it. 
Afterward, the skull was to be burned under the 
place where the woman cooked her husband's rice; 
and as she stirred the rice certain incantations were 
to be repeated. The woman was discovered and dis- 
ciplined for her relapse — poor perplexed soul ! — into 
heathenish heresy, but — I am glad to report — much 
more mildly than the most zealous among the native 
brethren and sisters of the church thought appro- 
priate. 

In the second case, a girl had been having con- 
vulsions that were supposed to be caused by a demon 
which had taken possession of her. In this form of 
belief in demon-possession we meet everywhere one 
of the most ancient and terrifying and cruel of super- 
stitions. A devil-priest was summoned and arrived 
with his outfit of acolytes and tom-toms. While the 
girl was lying in a convulsion on the verandah, the 



290 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

priest produced a cock to whose leg he tied one end 
of a string, and then tied the other end to the leg of 
the girl. Then began the furious beating of tom- 
toms and the dancing of the priest, until he had 
worked himself into a condition of frenzy. Suddenly 
he drew a knife and struck off the head of the cock 
and then cut the end of the string tied to the girl's 
leg. The priest declared that the demon had entered 
along the string into the body of the cock and had 
then gone off into the air at the instant when the 
head of the cock was struck from its body. He then 
departed after declaring that the girl was cured, tak- 
ing the bird with him. It was not known whether 
the girl was permanently improved by the treatment 
she received; but it was authentically reported tha^ 
the devil-priest had the rooster for dinner next day. 
Surely he ran an awful risk of assimilating some 
remnant of the demon. 

In the third instance, the girl believed herself 
possessed of a devil, and had certainly been acting 
up to her belief. She had been behaving like one 
"all possessed." When Mr. Moscrop saw her, her 
hair was dishevelled and her countenance dark and 
fierce, with an expression fitly described as demo- 
niacal. The priestly therapeutics began a wild dance 
to the beating of tom-toms, the girl dancing in exact 
imitation of the priest. It was ordered that this 
performance should be kept up for a full hour; but 
at the end of a half hour the priest himself was so 



Ceylon and Homeward- Bound 291 

much used-up that he was evidently anxious to bring 
his labors at healing to a speedy end. He asked Mr. 
Moscrop for the time, which was given to him as 
forty-five minutes by a watch one-quarter of an hour 
fast. Five minutes later, the priest inquired whether 
the time was not yet at an end ; for the dance had 
been growing wilder and both participants in it 
seemed near the point of utter exhaustion. On being 
told that it was time for the ceremony to end, the 
dancing ceased, the girl fell back in a swoon, and 
the priest departed declaring that the demon would 
never again trouble her. Since it was so much 
trouble to get rid of the devil in this case, we can 
the more readily believe that his chance of getting 
a new grip upon the same sufferer was at least con- 
siderably lessened from that time onward. 

By a study of articles written by a native savant 
and published in the Ceylon Branch of the Royal 
Asiatic Society's Journal, I learned some very inter- 
esting facts regarding the religious condition of the 
natives of the island. The natives of the lower orders 
seem to care very little about Buddhism, although 
it is the religion they profess ; in most cases of 
real difficulty they do not freely resort to it or to 
its priests. Instead of Buddhism, the devil-wor- 
ship of their ancestors for untold generations is the 
underlying, permanent, and practically efficient re- 
ligion of the great multitude of the lower orders of 
the Singhalese. 



292 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

The Singhalese believe that the demons they wor- 
ship are of two kinds, bad and good. The Taksayo, 
or demons proper, are the cause of all the ills that 
flesh is heir to. But then there are the Demivos, 
or Dewatawos, who are inferior gods not necessarily 
malignant but easily offended, when they become 
revengeful towards those who have displeased them. 
Each of these two classes of demons has its priests ; 
but the worship of neither class flourishes wholly by 
the practice of its priesthood. The priests of the 
"not-necessarily-malignanf* demons are subdivided 
into four classes, according to the delights of the 
demons they serve: Some there are who delight in 
propitiatory off'erings ; some who delight in living 
beings ; some who delight in music, dancing and 
similar ceremonials ; and some who delight in death. 

The demonology of the Singhalese is naive but 
sufliciently elaborate. There is a kingdom of devils, 
vast and numerous, with a cruel monarch Wessamony 
at its head. He loves tortures. There is a govern- 
ment of viceroys, ministers, and subordinate chiefs. 
Prescribed ceremonials of a pandemoniacal charac- 
ter are in order every Saturday and Wednesday of 
each week. There is a regular system of govern- 
ment licenses, without which the demons cannot in- 
flict diseases or receive offerings. But certain free- 
booting demons exist. 

The number of demons is beyond all calculation; 
but some fifty or sixty are most prominent, a sort 



Ceylon and Homeward-Bound 293 

of chiefs of the community. Of all, the worst is one 
whose special department is blood! He is described 
as having a human body with an ape's face, and he 
rides on a bull of a deep blood-red color. Another 
of these arch-demons has the department of corpses 
under his charge ; he is the "grave-yard" demon. He 
is 122 feet high, and has three eyes and four hands, 
and his skin is of a deep blood-red color ! There are 
demons of wind, of bile, of phlegm, etc., etc. The 
air is full of them. And, indeed, if one believe in 
demonology at all, why should one limit the number 
even to the multitude comprised in the elaborate 
demonology of the Singhalese? Modern civilization 
so-called can add a vast host more to those enumer- 
ated in so naive a system. 

But what is further to be noticed as a most sig- 
nificant fact in the history of comparative religions 
is this: Buddhism in Ceylon has not only tolerated 
but has incorporated into itself a considerable part 
of the native demonology. At least four-fifths, and 
perhaps nine-tenths, of the Buddhist temples resorted 
to by the common people have a central shrine dedi- 
cated to Buddha ; but on one side, a shrine dedicated 
to some Hindu god (usually Vishnu); and, on the 
other side, a shrine dedicated to some devil (usually 
Pattini, the small-pox goddess). A Buddhistic work 
of great authority, as a matter of discipline for the 
monks, admonishes them not to throw stones or sticks 
or even to swing their arms when walking, lest they 



294 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

may strike some demon of the air and injure and 
anger him. 

Belief in "demon trees" is almost universal among 
the natives of Ceylon. Even in the city limits of 
Colombo there are several such trees to be seen by 
the observing pedestrian. Thieves "conscientiously" 
avoid them. No non-Christian native would venture 
under or near one at night. Probably only the more 
emancipated Christians could avoid an involuntary 
shudder at their proximity. At any rate they are 
fain to turn aside or hurry by ; unless the tree can 
be used as an asylum against the intending robber. 
Among the trees especially given over to demons are 
the Ficus altissima^ the Cassia fistula, and the Beli 
tree. No one dares to cut down such a tree when 
full-grown; but they are carefully destroyed in the 
gardens before they are large enough for a demon 
to occupy. 

The belief in demon-children is the most cruel of 
this class of superstitions : the belief still exists, how- 
ever, and is widely prevalent ; and there is reason 
to think that in the remoter country places the Gov- 
ernment has never succeeded in completely suppress- 
ing the practices connected with it. Scarcely twenty 
years before the time of our visit, a child bom with a 
profusion of hair an inch long, with teeth already 
cut, and with ill-proportioned features, was pro- 
nounced to be a "demon-child." Accordingly, its 
brains were beaten out with a club by the grandfather 



Ceylon and Homeward-Bound 295 

of the child. Under the watch of the present govern- 
ment, the facts in the remoter villages are difficult 
to ascertain ; but infanticide on this ground is prob- 
ably not so very infrequent up to the present time. 
As to the older native custom one may read in Robert 
Knox's strange book called "Historical Narration." 
There we are told : "As soon as the Child is bom the 
Father or some Friend apply themselves to an As- 
trologer to enquire whether the Child be born in a 
prosperous planet, and a good hour or an evil. If 
it be found to be an etM, they presently destroy it, 
either by starving it, let it lie and die, or by drowning 
it, putting its head into a Vessel of water, or by bury- 
ing it alive, or else by giving it to some body of the 
same degree with themselves . . . for they say the 
child will be unhappy to the parents and to none 
else. We have asked them why they will deal so with 
the poor Infants that come out of their bowels.'' 
They will indeed have a kind of regret and trouble 
at it. But they say withal, Why should I bring 
up a Devil in my HouseV 

Belief in astrology is nearly if not quite universal 
among the Singhalese, — as, indeed it is among all 
peoples of similar stages of scientific culture. Just 
before our arrival on the former visit to Ceylon there 
had been the greatest excitement in connection with 
the November shower of meteors. An Austrian 
astrologer of great repute was bruited abroad as 
having predicted that the world was surely coming to 



296 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

an end. The Buddhist inhabitants of the villages 
surrounding Colombo seemed to fear most this im- 
pending calamity; and the more so, since a Brahman 
who was supposed to have been favored with a vision 
while resting on a rock near the Dampool Wihare, 
was wandering about and distributing predictions of 
the arrival on the thirteenth of that month, of a 
demon that "was to cause the death of anyone who 
spoke in answer to his knocks on the doors.'* Even 
up to the time of our arrival the priests were kept 
busy saying Pirit and Banu in the temples, as well as 
at the residences of the more wealthy members of 
their flocks. Several begging friars were also parad- 
ing the streets of the city ; and almsgiving was car- 
ried on to an unexampled extent. 

But there were pleasanter things to see and read 
about than those which have just been described, and 
some of them no less curious and interesting. No 
sooner had our ship come to anchor than its rigging 
and its rails were covered with swarms of beautiful 
butterflies ; and, after we had landed, we saw other 
swarms flying along the shore of the sea. The region 
from which they come, annually and at this time of 
the year, is not well known; but the peculiar thing 
about their flight was said to be that they always 
fly against and never with the strong monsoon. The 
natives explain the phenomenon with the charming 
conceit that the butterflies are making their annual 
visit to the tomb of Buddha. 



Ceylon and Homeward- Bound 297 

The same corvus impudent with which we made 
such intimate acquaintance in Madras is equally in 
evidence in Colombo. The crows congregate in a 
neighboring island which is named after them, at 
night ; but during the day they swarm into and for- 
age the city. They are credited with distributing 
its districts among themselves, the same birds re- 
appearing at the same spots day after day and not 
allowing any visits from intruders. 

The street scenes of Colombo have in only some- 
what diminished degree the same charming variety of 
picturesquely colored and decorated animal and hu- 
man forms. The bullocks which draw the carts are 
branded, — many in strangely fantastic and some of 
them in rather artistic fashion over a large portion 
of the entire hide. Different styles and colors of 
clothing and of head-dress — the Tamils wear 
turbans, the Singhalese go bare-headed, but wear 
conspicuous and curiously carved combs — give an 
air of thronged gaiety to all the principal thorough- 
fares, or dot the thickly shaded lanes along which 
are the huts of the poor, and the extensive com- 
pounds of the wealthy. 

On the evening of the day of our arrival (Sunday) 
in Colombo, homeward-bound, I spoke in the church 
of the Wesleyan Methodists on the "Essentials of 
Christianity." The audience was fair in numbers, 
but apparently of not the same intellectual quality 
as most of the Indian audiences. After the address 



298 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

a communion-service was held, in the very impressive 
form of the Wesleyan Methodists, which I had never 
seen before. On the way back we had an illustration 
of the fashion in which the common soldier of the 
dominant foreign race is quite too apt to misbehave 
in his relations to the natives of the race he is so sure 
to regard as quite inferior. The driver of our garry 
was proceding along the street-car track at a fair 
but not extravagant pace, and two English "Tom- 
mies" were walking in front of his vehicle and in 
the same direction. The driver had made several 
attempts to attract their attention but without suc- 
cess. He was at last compelled to pull in his horse 
with a shout when its head was nearly over the shoul- 
der of one of the soldiers. At this the Tommy 
turned and struck the poor brute a cruel blow in 
the face with the butt-end of his cane. We barely 
escaped being spilled by the roadside in a runaway; 
and when the horse was brought under control, the 
harness was so damaged as to be quite useless for 
draught purposes. We had to walk a mile or two 
before we could secure jinrickshas, and reached the 
compound of our host late and exhausted. The 
indignation passed, and the exhaustion was soon 
cured; but the memory of the walk in the moonlight 
by the sea on the Galle Face road will, in the wealth 
of charm which it affords, not soon pass nor be 
exhausted. 

That same night we had our last and most start- 



Ceylon and Homeward-Bound 299 

ling, but in its issue entirely harmless and rather 
amusing, personal experience with the ways of the 
varied and ubiquitous reptile species in this quarter 
of the world. I was awakened by a curious noise 
of periodic thumping, as though between crawls ; and 
since we had noticed before retiring that the French 
windows of our large bedroom opened upon a veran- 
dah with steps to the ground well adapted for climb- 
ing by snakes, I began at once to suspect a cobra 
of attempting to hitch himself across the floor of 
the room. I therefore cried out a sharp warning to 
the other occupant of the room, who was fast asleep 
in a bed a dozen feet from my own : "Wake up, don't 
step out of bed, but light your candle quickly." 
Light procured, feeble though it was, the nature of 
the disturbance to our slumbers was readily ap- 
parent. For each successive thump was followed by 
a billowing motion in the canvas-ceiling over our 
heads and by the squealing of a terrified rat, the 
cessation of which soon showed that the rat-snake 
had done well and thoroughly the very task for 
which he had some years before, when much smaller, 
been shut in between the ceiling and the roof of the 
bungalow. 

Our last days in Ceylon were made memorable by 
one of the most delightful of excursions, entirely 
easy to be taken, anywhere upon tlie face of the 
habitable earth. This was the excursion to Kandy, 
headquarters of Buddhism in Ceylon, and indeed of 



300 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

Southern Buddhism generally. The first mention 
of Kandy as a city is at the beginning of the 14th 
century, when a temple was built there, to contain 
one of Buddha's many mouthsful of teeth, and other 
relics of the same master's religion. From this be- 
ginning it grew into the site for residences of the 
different branches of the royal family and the seat 
of the Buddhistic hierarchical institutions. It was 
afterwards made the political capital of the island, — 
an eminence greatly to its misfortune, for it is 
usually disastrous to mix religion with too much 
politics. Kandy was so often burned in the wars 
between the Portuguese and the Dutch that scarcely 
any of the ancient buildings besides the temples and 
the royal residence were standing when the English 
took possession of it in 1815. 

We rose at 5 :30, had chota liazri at 6 :15 and took 
the train at 7:10 from the terminal station of the 
railway to Kandy. The first two hours of the jour- 
ney are rather monotonous for those already accus- 
tomed to tropical scenery; but to us who had not 
yet been surfeited with it, all was very interesting 
and beautiful. The jungle, so different from that of 
India ; the varying hues of the paddy-fields ; the 
chiaro-scuro of the bamboo-groves, always the most 
successful of nature's attempts at this style of del- 
icate beauty; the stately water-buff alos, with their 
fine brown hides made lustrous by the warm sunshine, 
either plowing or standing knee-deep tethered in the 



Ceylon and Homeward-Bound 301 

parti-colored grasses; the gaily clad natives just 
glimpsed down the well-kept red-rock roads, or lying 
lazily chattering around the doors of their brown- 
thatched huts, — these and other charming sights pre- 
vented all sense of weariness or ennui, although the 
day was very hot. After we had gone into the re- 
freshment-car for breakfast, and had begun the 
ascent to Kandy, the views from the car-windows 
became more varied with near valleys and distant 
mountains, rocks of either morphological or histori- 
cal interest ("Bible Rock," "Castle Rock," and the 
rock down which the old monarchs of Kandy used 
to hurl their captives), and picturesque woods nearer 

by. 

We left the train at Paradeniya, and after a hur- 
ried visit to the tea-factory near by, spent an hour 
or two walking and driving through the Royal 
Botanic Gardens, justly celebrated as the best of 
all places to study tropical vegetation. Such mag- 
nificence of verdure it is difficult to picture in dream- 
land and quite impossible to describe effectively in 
words. The Gardens cover about 150 acres and are 
encircled on three sides by a royal river. Among 
the most curious of its exotics is the wonderful Coco 
de Mer, the fruit of which has a double and some- 
times triple formation, and is many times as large 
as the ordinary cocoa-nut, and sometimes weighs 40 
or even 50 pounds. At one time great medicinal 
value was ascribed to it; and it is said that the 



302 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

Emperor Rudolph II offered 4000 florins for a 
single specimen. If there is truth in what a visiting 
German scientist said for publication but perhaps 
facetiously, that there is a poisonous snake hanging 
from some limb of every tree in the Gardens, we saw 
no evidence of it ; though there is not the least doubt 
that poisonous tree-snakes are particularly plentiful 
in the Royal Botanic Gardens near Kandy. 

From the Gardens, by a road every hut along 
which, as well as every more pretentious dwelling, is 
embowered in a garden of cocoa-nut palms, bread- 
fruit trees, coff^ee-trees, and brilliant tropical shrubs 
of varieties strange to northern eyes, we drove to 
the City of Kandy. Its site is nearly 1700 feet 
above the sea-level, on the banks of a small lake 
and surrounded on all sides by picturesque hills. A 
road called "Lady Horton's Walk" winds around 
one of these hills ; and on one of its almost pre- 
cipitous sides, from the carriage one looks deep down 
into a valley through which rolls a beautiful river. 
In a park at its foot is the Governor's pavilion, a 
building of most attractive architecture. The whole 
place is a perfect paradise of the Oriental tropical 
kind. It is an almost cruel fate for travellers who 
have come so far to have only a few hours rather 
than as many weeks to admire and enjoy this center 
of southern Buddhism. 

After driving around the artificiallake which the 
cruel Raja Singh constructed, we visited the temple 



Ceylon and Home ward- Bound 303 

on its shores — known as the "Temple of the Tooth" 
■ — and its celebrated Library of palm-leaf manu- 
scripts. It was one of these, alleged to be most 
ancient, which I had some months before been per- 
mitted to handle as a special privilege in the San- 
skrit College in Calcutta. It is claimed that the 
"sacred tooth" was brought to Ceylon a short time 
before the arrival of Fa Hian in 311 A.D., in 
charge of the Princess Kalinga who concealed it in 
the folds of her hair. Since that time it has been 
carried by forced seizure back to India, recovered, 
hidden for a long period, discovered by the Portu- 
guese and taken off to Goa where it was burned by 
the archbishop in the presence of the Portuguese 
Viceroy and his court. Another tooth, which is sup- 
posed to be a facsimile of the original, has been 
substituted ; but it is a piece of discolored ivory 
about two inches long and little less than an inch 
wide, and resembles the tooth of some animal (a 
crocodile.?) rather than a human being. Its enshrine- 
ment, however, is worthy of the divine Buddha; for 
the disreputable pretender rests on a lotus flower of 
pure gold, under seven concentric metal shrines that 
are adorned with jewels in increasing richness as they 
diminish in size. 

The Library at Kandy is exceedingly rich in 
Buddhist scriptures in the Pali language, many of 
which are most beautifully bound — if one can call it 
^binding" — in illuminated wooden or repousee silver 



304 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

covers. On entering the Library a plate was at once 
thrust under my nose and the rupee lying upon it 
was a not altogether delicate hint that the contribu- 
tion expected was to be a coin of not inferior value. 
When the hint was repeated, however, it was finally 
met with a refusal: "No. I have already given 
enough, and I am too poor to give more." I re- 
gretted afterward that I had not told them: "Of 
all the many Buddhist temples I have ever visited you 
have much the meanest beggars ; you are no better 
than Hindus in your shameless begging." 

On the train down to Colombo, in spite of the 
wearisome heat, we enjoyed the charming views not 
a whit less, but if possible even more, than when we 
had first seen them. We reached dinner and bed, well 
spent indeed, but never better satisfied with a day's 
excursion than that which took us to and from the 
sacred center of Southern Buddhism (not of the 
Mahd-Vagga, or so-called "Greater Vehicle" to be 
sure), with its collection of the Ti-Pitika or "The 
Three Baskets" or Testaments, of the canon of 
Buddhistic scriptures in the Pali language, now ac- 
counted "to furnish the most authoritative informa- 
tion of the Buddha and his doctrine that we have." 
We had indeed only seen the jeweled covers of a few 
of these scriptures ; but we could henceforth collect, 
as occasion required, some of the jewels of thought 
which they conveyed, by reference to English trans- 
lations, with quickened memories and more enlight- 
ened interest. 



Ceylon and Homeward-Bound 305 

"Even as a man hemmed in by foes, 
Seeking a certain safe escape, 
And nathless seeking not to flee, 
Might not the blameless pathway chide; 

"So, when my passions hem me in, 
And yet a way to bliss exists. 
Should I not seek to follow it, 
That way of bliss I might not chide." 

The "lecturing campaign," if so it may be called, 
which had begun in Japan and which had included 
considerably more than one-hundred addresses on 
topics of educational, philosophical, and religious in- 
terest, came to a close with an address on "Im- 
mortality in the Light of Modem Science," the 
evening of the day before we left Ceylon. The audi- 
ence was larger, and seemed more intellectually keen 
and more deeply interested than had the other audi- 
ences which I addressed in Colombo. A bullock-cart 
and jinrickshas brought us to the jetty, from which 
the conveyance to the ship "Derbyshire" in the offing 
was smooth and quick, and so in most marked 
contrast with the rough and dangerous passage on 
board the "Chusan," when a tropical thunder-storm 
and its hurricane of wind had only partially sub- 
sided, in November of the preceding year. 

For the last time we were entertained with the 
spectacle of a great ship getting ready to sail from 
one of the large cities of the tropics along this 
thronged line of ocean traffic. The scene aboard and 
around the ship had its customary varied and lively 
aspect. Boys were diving for small coins which they 



306 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

had coaxed the passengers standing by the rail to 
throw into the water; other boys were climbing the 
ship's side or dancing on their small rafts, whacking 
their naked sides to keep the rag-time of the ditties 
they were singing; venders of cheap jewelry and 
other jimcracks were trying to coax the passengers 
away from the rail, to inspect their wares and per- 
chance yield to their importunities and their vocif- 
erous lying; boats were bringing loads of passengers 
aboard or conveying away the friends who had said 
their last tearful or laughing farewells ; and swarms 
of dark-skinned coolies were loading on the last of 
a cargo which, for variety and strangeness of its 
commodities, can be matched nowhere outside of 
tropical waters. For us it was a mingling of sad- 
ness and pleasure to have to say: "Good-bye, vastly 
interesting and mysterious India; good-bye exquis- 
itely charming but as yet scarcely half-redeemed 
Ceylon." 

The "Derbyshire" sailed promptly from the offing 
at Colombo at six o'clock in the afternoon of the 
eighth of March, 1900; the entire voyage of twelve 
days to Ismailiya, which had been dreaded so much 
on account of the predicted terrific heat, really 
proved most comfortable, refreshing and rest- 
ful. After the first few hours the thermometer in 
our cabin was never much, if any, above eighty ; and 
when we reached the Red Sea, instead of rising, as 
it usually does at that time of the year, we were 



Ceylon and Homeward-Botind 307 

favored with a strong cool breeze from the North- 
east. Indeed, many of the passengers began to de- 
velop influenzas, fevers, and neuralgias, due to a 
sudden drop of nearly thirty degrees in the tem- 
perature. 

The passenger fare, which was chiefly from Bur- 
mah, afl^orded few companions ; but to sit and read 
in the open air, in summer clothing, and at times 
to rest the eyes by watching the sailors, or the rush 
of the smooth waters, or the flight of tlie birds, was 
pastime enough for those who had just come from a 
surfeit of other more exacting activities of an intel- 
lectual and social kind. 

By listening to the conversation of a "burgher" 
who had been a magistrate in Ceylon, I heard re- 
peated the customary denunciations of all the native 
races of all that part of the world. In his opinion, 
based upon thirty years of experience with them, the 
Singhalese were the most degraded and dishonest race 
upon the face of the earth. The Singhalese misses, 
whose fathers had got a little property, — apeing 
aristocratic foreign manners — insisted on having a 
coolie-girl to carry their prayer-books to church 
for them ! The native barristers, police and other 
oflScers, were almost universally corrupt. But, on 
being questioned, my informant admitted that the 
English Government officers had not always been 
shining examples of unimpeachable virtue ; and he 
especially instanced one of them, whose name is 



808 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

known all over the world as a writer on Buddhism, 
as having habitually received presents from the head- 
men of the villages, and as having been dismissed 
from the service for having lied about the bribery 
when he was accused of it. He also admitted that 
the Singhalese were probably no worse than the na- 
tive races of Bengal and of Burmah; while, on the 
other hand, a gentleman who had lived a long time in 
Burmah gave a much more favorable account of both 
priests and people in that British Province. On 
this whole matter, — now so increasingly important 
on account of our growing and tightening relations 
with Oriental peoples of various races and degrees 
of civilization or barbarism — it is my experience that 
men are everywhere essentially alike; although the 
ways of showing the good or the bad disposition and 
intent vary wonderfully. These ways of expressing 
goodness and badness you have to know before you 
can judge the real man fairly. 

At length we were inside the Gulf of Suez, with 
the land visible on either side. The shores of 
Arabia and of Egypt, even when wholly barren, are 
exceedingly picturesque. How strange to think that 
centuries ago in time, but only a few miles distant 
in space, Mosaism and Muhammadanism originated; 
and separated by a narrow strip of water and of 
land, the monarchies of ancient Egypt rose and 
feU. 

And now, just before the bugle blew for dinner 



Ceylon and Homeward-Bound 309 

we came to anchor off Suez at the entrance to the 
Canal. It was a fairy-like scene which was to be 
enjoyed as we lay there for more than two hours 
passing quarantine and complying with the other 
regulations necessary to admit us through the Canal. 
When, about ten o'clock, the full moonlight made 
faint the raws of red and green buoys on either side 
of the Canal, the view became even more weird, soft 
and enchanting. At three o*clock of that moonlit 
night the ship turned into the basin opposite the 
customhouse at Ismailiya, and without quite stopping 
took aboard the dozen of new passengers waiting 
on the harbor launch. Then, after letting our lug- 
gage into the same launch, careful hands lowered us 
enough to enable us to jump into the arms of the 
sailor standing in the ship's shadow below. The gong 
rang "Speed ahead," and the "Derbyshire" moved 
into the further moonlight and was soon lost to sight. 
Thus it cut the last link that bound our senses to 
the winter spent in India. 

After I had given the Turk, who was even at this 
uncanny hour seated "at the receipt of customs," 
word of honor that we had nothing which the law 
did not permit in the various pieces of luggage, they 
were left in the customs-house, and their owner went 
to join his wife in the Inn "Victoria" across the way, 
for the few hours until the morning train should start 
for Cairo. 

Here ends the story briefly told of how in some- 



310 Intimate Glimpses of Life in India 

what more than a half-year of time we had come from 
the Far East to the Near East, gathering much in- 
formation, making many friends, and — we faintly 
hoped — distributing some bits of good influence, by 
the way. We had seen numerous kinds of peoples 
and types of civilization ; — their ways of transacting 
business and of social intercourse, their varying cos- 
tumes and strange customs, their manner of welcom- 
ing the new-born babe into the world, of disciplining 
or neglecting him, of feasting and of mourning, of 
marrying their youth and burying their dead; in a 
word, what they thought of life and how they took 
it all, so far as could be judged from their most 
ordinary or more secret conventions, and their preva- 
lent forms of expressing the hearths emotions in 
words and conduct. Best of all of our privileges, and 
on the whole profitable, was the rare opportunity 
which had been so freely and painstakingly provided 
to give us some intimate acquaintance with the five 
greatest of religions, of Confucianism, Buddhism, 
Hinduism, Muhammadanism, and Christianity — 
their beliefs, ceremonial, and precepts for the regula- 
tion of the practical life. In a word, we had come 
from the Land of the Rising Sun, stopping longest 
under the high lights and amidst the deep shadows 
of India, to finish all our observations and experi- 
ences by going to slumber under the mysterious 
moonlight that shone on the Deserts of Arabia and 
the Valley of the Nile. 



INDEX 



Agra, magnificence of, 109f. ; 
Government Jail of, 117. 

Ahmedabad, ancient city of, 
73f. ; seat of Jainism, 74. 

Ahmednagae, history of, 
216f. ; famine and plague 
in, 218f.; "Second Church of 
Christ" in. 220, 225; mis- 
sions in, 224 f., 227f., 229 f. 

Akbar the Great, Founder 
of Mogul Empire, 92-94; 
Tomb of, at Sikandra, llOf.; 
palaces of, at Agra, lllf. 

Amber, described, 81 f. 

Architecture, of the Mogul 
Empire, 96f., 98f., 114f.; in 
Southern India, 273f.; of 
the Dravidian Temple type, 
276. 

Babus, meaning of term, 136; 
of Bengal, 136, 148 f., 150f.; 
the Singhalese, 307. 

Ballantine, Dr., accompanies 
to the Caves of Ellora, 201 f. 

Banurji, Justice, orthodoxy 
of, 143. 

Baxurji, Mr. Kali, standing 
of, 141; escort of, 144, 164; 
influence of, 152. 

Benares, The "Holy," Chap. 
VIII; general view of, 179f., 
182; burning ghats of, 
178f.; Ganges bank of, 
181 f.; temples of, 182f.; 
lecture at the Sanskrit Col- 
lege, 184f.; and at the Mis- 
sion, 193. 



Bhandahkar, Prof., religious 
views of, 45 f., 220. 

Bhinga, The "Ascetic Raja," 
visit to, 173f.; his view of 
Maja, 175 f.; and of Nir- 
vana, 176, 

Bhutia Busti, village of, 121 f. 

Bochum, Jesuit Father, 14, 
16, 37. 

Bombay, city of, Chap. II, 25- 
27; public buildings of, 25 f., 
36; University of, 26f., 36; 
streets of, 27f. 

BosE, Mr., Founder of Branch 
of Brahmo-Somaj, 158. 

Brahmans, superstitions of, 
164f., 165f., 227f., 233,249f.; 
of good caste in Madura, 
271. 

Brahmanism, deficiencies of, 
220f., 249f.; its conception 
of God, 222f.; and of sin, 
223f.; corruptions of, 245 f. 

Brahmo-Somaj, annual cele- 
bration of, 141f., 159; City 
College of, 144f.; visit to, 
152f., 154f., 157f., 159f.; 
religious services of, 154f., 
159. 

British Government in In- 
dia, various estimates of, 
42 f., 43 f., 221 f., 246 f.; of 
Bengal, 140f. ; educational 
policy of, 149f., 232f.; in 
Southern India, 246f., 248, 
250 f. 

Buddhism, tradition as to 
founding of, 187-189; col- 



311 



312 



Index 



lection of art-work of, in 
Madras, 262; in Ceylon, 
285f., 293f.; its seat at Kan- 
dy, 299 f. 
Burgess, on Caves of Ellora, 
207. 

Calcutta, situation of the 
City, 138; as Capital of In- 
dia, 138f., 144-148; lectures 
at, 141 f., 143; educational 
institutions of, 144f., 145 f., 
146f., 148f. 

Cakdy, Chief Justice, as vice- 
Chancellor of University, 16, 
31 f., 37f. 

Ceremonials, op Hinduism, A 
"Death Ceremonial," 48-63; 
at Benares, 181-184; in 
Southern India, 275, 277. 

Ceylon, history of, 285f., 293; 
Singhalese rulers of, 286; 
physical characteristics of, 
286f., 300, 304; devil-wor- 
ship in, 291f., 294f.; Bud- 
dhism in, 293. 

Chaitanya Somaj, visit to, 
159. 

CoLGHAN, Archbishop, visit 
to, 260f. 

Colombo, natural characteris- 
tics of, 287, 297; Christian 
population of, 288; streets 
of, 297; lectures in, 297f., 
305 ; j ourney from, to Is- 
mailiya, 306-309. 

Crudgington, Dr., his ascent 
of the Congo, 108. 

CuuzoN, Lord, "Viceroy of In- 
dia," views of education, 
149f.; hospitality of, 160, 
162f. 

Dadu, founder of Hindu Prot- 
estant Sect, 89. 

Darjeeling, Chap. VI; jour- 
ney to, 122f.; Mr. Brown, 



our host, in, 126, 134; the 
landslides at, 126f.; as seen 
from "Observatory Hill," 
128. 

Da-ud Khan, Mogul ruler in 
Southern India, 250f. 

Daulatabad, station of, 202, 
213; rock fortress of, 203, 
211f. 

Deccan, physical characteris- 
tics of, 217f. 

Delhi, Siege of, 94f., 96; 
mosque of, 95f.; "Fort" at, 
96f. 

Devil Worship, as practiced 
even by Christians in Cey- 
lon, 288f., 290f.; prevalence 
in Ceylon, 291 f., 294f.; be- 
lief in "demon trees," 294; 
and in "demon children," 
294f. 

Dravidian, its temple archi- 
tecture, 276f.; languages of, 
279 f. 

DuRGA, worship of, 178. 

Elephanta, Caves of, visit to, 
39 f. 

Ellora, Caves of, journey to 
the, 200f., 202f.; bungalow 
at, 205; Fergusson's de- 
scription of, 206f.; visit to, 
207f.; return from, 210f. 

Famine Camps, at Ahmeda- 
bad, 87; and Jaipur, 87f.; 
at Ahmednagar, 217f. 

Fergusson, on architecture of 
India, {quoted) 111, 116; on 
Caves of Ellora, 206 f., 208 f. 

Fort George, history of, 249f., 
254; visit to, 253-256; de- 
scription of, 253 f. 

Hati Singh, temple of, 74, 76. 
Hector, Dr., Principal of 

"Free Church College," 146; 

hospitality of, 163f. 



Index 



313 



Himalaya {"H imachal")^ 
meaning of name, 122; as 
seen from "Observatory 
Hill," 126, 127f., 129f.; as 
seen from Jalapahar, 132f. 

HiMALAYAif Railway, de- 
scribed, 124f., 136. 

HiKDuisM, freedom of belief 
in, 44 f., 175, 220f., 270f.; 
power of caste, in, 44f., 
164f., 234, 271f.; obscenity 
and cruelty of, 167f., 177, 
242f., 247f.; the "higher," 
174 f., 184f., 222; converts 
from, 226 f.; as contrasted 
with Christianity, 220f. 

Hopkins, Prof., E. W. {quot- 
ed), 167, 247. 

HuGLi, character of the River, 
139. 

HuMAYusr, Tomb of, 107. 

Hume, Da. Robert, work in 
Ahmednagar, 218, 224f. 

Hyderabad, The "Nizam," 
founding of, 199f.; bunga- 
low of, 205. 

Jains, doctrines of, 74f., 78, 
169f. ; numbers of, in India, 
77; temple of, in Calcutta, 
169f. 

Jaipitr, history of city, 81 f.; 
museum of, 83; observatory 
of, 84, 85; government of, 
86 f. 

Jalapahar Hill, seat of can- 
tonment at Darjeeling, 132f. 

"Jumping Well," adventure 
at, 102-107. 

Kailas, rock temple of, 208f. 

Kali, worship of, 167, 169; 
visit to temple of, 167f. 

Kandy, excursion to, 299-304; 
temples at, 303, 304; Li- 
brary at, 303f. 

Kano Yu-wei, flight of, from 
Japan, 20f. 



"Kapola Bania" Caste, tem- 
ples and burning-ghat, of, 
49f.; worship of the, 51f.; 
"Death Ceremonial" of, 53- 
63. 

Keshub Chunder Sen, visit 
to his home, 153f. ; his tomb, 
154; the chapel where he 
taught, 154f. 

Knox, Robert, his book on 
demonology in Ceylon, 295. 

KuTB MiNAR, visit to, 99 f. 

"Lily Cottage," home of 
Keshub Chunder Sen, de- 
scribed, 153f., 155f. 

Madras, journey to, 234f.; 
physical aspect of, 236f., 
265; earthquake at, 237; 
quarantine at, 237f.; lec- 
tures at, 238 f., 266, 267; va- 
rious schools in, 239f. ; Mu- 
seum of, 261 f., 263; sur- 
rounding Missions, 265f. 

Madura, history of, 269f.; re- 
ception at, 270f. ; invitation 
to the Hindu Club of, 271 f.; 
Mission work in, 272f,, 281; 
"Great Temple," of, de- 
scribed, 275f., 277f. 

Majumdar, 153. 

Malabar Hill, 23, 28. 

Malabari, visit from, 40 f.; 
his estimate of various peo- 
ples, 40f. ; and of the Brit- 
ish Government, 42f. 

Manucci, so-called "Pepys of 
Mogul India," 204, 249, 251, 
256, 258; his actions in 
Southern India, 249f., 251 f., 
255, 258; marriage. 255 f.; 
practice of "blood-letting," 
256; his home on "Big 
Mount," 258. 

Milij!:r, Dr., President of 
"Christian College," 239. 



10587 13€ 



314 



Index 



Mogul Empire, history of, 92- 
94; architecture of, 96f., 
98f., 114f.; in Southern In- 
dia, 243 f., 249 f. 

MoTi MusjiD, or *' Pearl 
Mosque," described, lllf. 

MouxT St. Thomas, or "Big 
Mount," visit to, 258f. 

Nirvana, Jain's view of, 75 f.; 
Raja Bhinga's view, 176. 

Paradeniya, visit to Royal 
Botanic Gardens at, 301 f. 

"Parthana Somaj," 46. 

Parsees, wealth of, 63f.; wed- 
ding ceremony of, 64-69. 

Passumalia, visit to, 274f. 

"Patrika," The, visit to edi- 
tor of, 166f. 

"Peacock Throxe," the, 97f. 

Pedlar, Mr., "Director of Ed- 
ucation" in Bengal, his 
views, 150. 

Pei^ky, Mrs., historian of 
Fort George, Madras, 249. 

Portuguese, in Southern In- 
dia, 239, 240f. 

Ptimadu Daulah, Tomb of, 
112. 

Ranade, Chief Justice, qual- 
ities of, 18; welcome by, 
32f.; interest in Social Re- 
form, 39 f. 

Rauza, shrine of Deccan Mus- 
sulmans, 203. 

RiPON College, 147f. 

Sakya-Muni, "The Buddha," 
his connection with Benares, 
172f., 186f., 190, 192; found- 
ing of school at Sarnath, 
186f.; oldest relic of, 261f. 

Sarnath, visit to, 186-193, 
188, 190, 192f. 

"Shankara-charya," of the 
Shaiva Sect, 62f. 



Shephard, Justice, introduc- 
tion by, 239; entertained by, 
263f. 

Shivaites, Temple of, in Ma- 
dura, 275 f.; obscene worship 
of, 275f. 

SiKANDRA, "Appian Way" to, 
109f.; Tomb of Akbar at, 
llOf. 

Singhalese, demonology of, 
291f., 294f. 

Tagore, Sir Jottndra, The 
Pirati or "polluted" Brah- 
man, visit to, 164f. 

Taj Mahal, as the "glory of 
Agra," 113; described, 113f.; 
second visit to, 115f.; criti- 
cism of, 116f. 

Tata, Mr. J. N., 31, 33. 

Tavernier, {quoted) 97. 

Thome, Saint, visit to Church 
of, 257f. 

Thurston, Dr., custodian of 
the Madras Museum, 261 f., 
263. 

TiLAK, Mr. N. v., his criti- 
cism of Brahmanism, 220f., 
222. 

TiMUMALA Nayak, palacc 
of, described, 273f. 

Tirthankar, office of, among 
the Jains, 75 f., 169f. 

"Towers of Silence," the, 29 f. 

Tribhowandas, Mr., 48f.; in- 
vitation by, 52f., 55 f. 

Vedas, orthodox view of, 59 f.; 
liberal view of, 174f. 

Yale, Elihu, as Governor of 
Madras, 239, 255; relics of, 
at Fort George, 255 f.; mar- 
riage certificate of, 255; 
facsimile of Tomb of his 
son, 257. 



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